The [cEMNDic Discoverers 

/ '..ofAmER'CA;^^, 



'\AI<IE ft. SHOWN 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf -•.5-£^. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE ICELANDIC DISCOVERERS 
OF AMERICA; 

OB, 

HONOUR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE. 



MARIE A. BROWN, ^ n c 

AUTHOR OP "THB sunny NOETH, OE, SV7BDEN OV THE PAST AND Off THE PRESENT, 

"ifOBWAX AS IT IS;" AND TSANSLATOR OP " THB SUBGEON'S STOitlBS," 

"NADESOHDA," THE " SCHWABTZ " NOVELS, ETC. 



' They called the country Vinland.' 

' We know it,' said L ' I am a Vinlau'ler.' " 

Baxabd Taxlob. 



,?^ / 



BOSTON: 

MARIE A. BROWN. 

1888. 

[All rights reserved.} 



\ , 2^' 332 



^ 



<,A 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAOK 

The Immediate Necessity op EsTABLisHmG the Truth 1 



CHAPTER II. 

The Ma.nipest Duty op the United States in this 

Question 35 

CHAPTER III. 
The Evidence that the Icelanders Discovered Ame- 
rica IN the Tenth Century 56 

CHAPTER IV. 
Roman Catholic Cognizance op the Fact at the Time 

OP the Icelandic Discovery . . , , .70 

CHAPTER V. 

All the Motives for the Concealment and Fraud . 77 

CHAPTER VL 
Columbus' Visit to Iceland 100 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Scandinavian North and Spain Contrasted .111 



vl Contents. 



CHAPTER VIIl. 

PA'JE 

The Norse Discoverers and Columbus Contrasted . 147 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Beneficial Results to the Pj;esent Age and 
Posterity of Attributing this Momentous Dis- 
covery to the True Persons . . . .105 

CHAPTER X. 
The Celebration of it in 1985! . , . 185 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Righted Position of the Scandinavian North 

after this Justice has been accorded to it .195 

Bibliography of the important Books confirming 
THE Icelandic Discovery of America, from the 
YEARS 1076 -1883 200 



THE 

ICELANDIC DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA; 

OB, 

HONOUR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE. 

CHAPTEE L 

THE IMMEDIATE NECESSITY OP ESTABLISHING THE TRUTH. 

And why the immediate necessity, it may be asked, of esta- 
blishing a truth that has been hidden for a thousand years 1 
The Norse discovery has been buried in antiquity for a mil- 
lenary ; admitting that it was an actual discovery, it was made 
by men of an ancient race that are now extinct ; they turned it 
to no practical account and it led to no practical results. More- 
over, the accounts of it are too vague and unauthentic to have 
been made a matter of veritable history; we have all been 
taught that Columbus discovered America, and it is very hard 
to disabuse our minds of that idea. 

These are the current remarks and objections that greet the 
unlooked-for assertion that the Norsemen discovered America. 
They are also followed by the assumption that it is a matter of 
no importance either way, and may be left to antiquarians, if 
they choose to occupy themselves with this obscure question. 

Following out this conclusion, if it is indeed a matter of no 
importance whether the Norsemen discovered America or not, 
it becomes equally unimportant whether Columbus discovered 



2 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

America or not, and the discovery of the western continent 
ceases to be one of the greatest of events. That it has not been 
considered a trifling incident, or a mere matter of accident tliat 
posterity could not be expected to bear in mind, is proven by 
the extreme attention history has devoted to it, and the fame 
that the world, at the bidding of the imperative mandate of 
history, has accorded to Columbus, as a man who has accom- 
plished an unparalleled achievement. If this fame is rightfully 
due to Columbus, on the assumption that he discovered America, 
if the magnitude of the achievement is not exaggerated, if it 
was an herculean undertaking to cross the ocean on such a 
quest in those daj'^s, if Columbus should enjoy the homage of 
centuries in the past and of centuries to come, then the same 
fame is rightfully due to the Norsemen, on the assumption 
that they discovered America, the magnitude of the achievement 
being greater in their case, inasmuch as it was accomplished 
five hundred years before Columbus planned his enterprise, and 
thus presupposes men five hundred years in advance of him in in- 
telligence, courage, and nautical information and skill, and from 
the additional fact that this was only one of many undertakings 
on their part, for the settlement and colonization of new and 
far-off lands, if not their discovery, was an every-day affair with 
them. The lofty pride of the Norsemen, even more than 
humility, would for ever have prevented them from boasting of 
the discovery as did Columbus : " But our Redeemer hath 
granted this victory to our illustrious king and queen and their 
kingdoms, which have acquired great fame by an event of such 
high importance in which all Christendom ought to rejoice, and 
which it ought to celebrate with great festivals and the offering 
of solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity with many solemn prayers, 
both for the great exaltation which may accrue to them in 
turning so many nations to our lioly faith, and also for the 
temporal benefits which will bring great refreshment and gain, 
not only to Spain, but to all Chiistians," He wrote besides ; 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 3 

" I gave to the subject six or seven years of great anxiety, 
explaining to the best of my ability, how great service might be 
done to our Lord, by this undertaking, in promulgating His 
sacred name and our holy faith among so many nations ; an 
enterprise so exalted in itself, and so calculated to enhance the 
glory and immortalize the renown of great sovereigns." And 
one who edited an edition of Columbus' letters, says in his 
introduction : " The entire history of civilization presents us 
with no event, with the exception perhaps of the art of printing, 
so momentous as the discovery of the western world," But to \ 
a race Avho had founded the empire of Eussia, the republics of I 
Switzerland and Iceland, who had conquered Normandy and 
Great Britain, keeping a line of kings on the thrones of England 
and France, as they kept their czars on the throne of Russia, 
who " revived Hannibal's exploits in Italy," and shaped the 
confines of that land, — to such a race the discovery even of 
America was not an achievement so much more dazzling than 
the rest of their mighty deeds, while to Columbus it was the 
only thing he ever did. 

The scope of the Norse undertakings can best be judged by a 
perusal of the words of the Swedish historian, Strinnholm, on 
the subject : " It seems wonderful how the fleets and hosts of 
the North could be sufficient to embrace the whole stretch of 
coast from the Elbe clear to the Pyrenese peninsula, and for a 
whole generation not only keep the lands lying along the whole 
coast in a constant state of siege, but also to extend their 
expeditions to the Mediterranean, clear to the coast of Italy, 
and yet during the same time the British Isles, England, 
Ireland and Scotland, continued to be hard pressed by the 
hosts from the North." 

Columbus' estimate, however, of the value of the discovery 

of the " New World," was not extravagant ; none know so well 

the value of a thing as the one who appropriates it wrongfully, 

and the usurper is a good judge of the territory he invades 

B 2 



4 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

*' A practised slave-dealer," as Arthur Helps styles him, the 
commercial faculty was largely developed in him, much more 
largely than respect for the rights of property ; he possessed 
himself of the coveted acquisition of the Northmen, robbed 
them of their discovery, with the same ease and with as 
little compunction as he kidnapped slaves. Note a little sug- 
gestion of his to their " highnesses " in Spain, this likewise for 
the enhancement of their greatness and the glory of the Lord : 
" Considering what great need we have of cattle and of beasts 
of burthen, both for food and to assist the settlers on this and 
all these islands, both for peopling the land and for cultivating 
the soil, their Highnesses might authorize a suitable number of 
caravels to come here every year to bring over the said cattle, 
and provisions and other articles ; these cattle, &c., might bo 
sold at moderate prices for account of the beavers, and the latter 
might be paid with slaves, taken from among the Carribees, 
who are a wild people, fit for any work, well proportioned and 
very intelligent, and who, when they have got rid of the cruel 
habits to which they have become accustomed, will be better 
than any other kind of slaves." Commenting upon this, Arthur 
Helps says: "At the same time that we must do Columbus the 
justice to believe that his motives were right in his own eyes, it 
must be admitted that a more distinct suggestion for the esta- 
blishing of a slave-trade was never proposed." These slaves 
which he stole were to be exchanged for cattle and other 
necessaries ; the discovery that he stole was to be converted into 
honours, wealth, distinction, an undying fame and saintship for 
himself ! He wielded a lucid and persuasive, as well as pious 
pen, one that secured spiritual and temporal ends with equal 
facility, and he represented adequately and explicitly the value 
of this vast territorial acquisition, which he claimed as his dis- 
covery, to both Church and Throne. His own words yield the 
best testimony. After reading this self-laudation, what an 
unconscious satire appear the words of William Robertson, in 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 5 

his " History of America," when describing this man : " Co- 
lumbus, in whose character the modesty and diffidence of true 
genius was united with the ardent enthusiasm of a projector." 
But Columbus has a modern admirer and biographer who ha3 
struck his own key and inflection, and who both revives and 
perpetuates the fame of the long-suffering exile from pre- 
destined bliss, by building his " Life of Columbus " on the 
eminently pious one of Roselly de Lorgues, from which it is 
compiled ; this Catholic author, J. J. Barry, extols, with the 
rhapsody of the faithful, "the immortal discoverer of America, 
who, it is to be hoped, will ere long be solemnly enrolled 
on the glorious catalogue of the canonized saints." 

That Columbus' words were entirely convincing to the 
Church, is proven by the fact that " Pope Alexander VI. 
(Roderigo Borgia) deeded the continent of America to Spain, 
solely on the statement of Columbus," as quoted by Aaron 
Goodrich in his work " History of the Character and Achieve- 
ments of the so-called Christopher Columbus." This trenchant 
author, who dissects Columbus' character in the most unsparing 
way, also cites Count Roselly de Lorgues on the above point : 
" The pope has faith in Columbus. He yields full credence to 
him and justifies his calculations. It is solely on Columbus 
that he depends ; it is rehjing on Columbus that he engages in 
the vast partition of the unexplored world, between the croicns 
of Spain and Portugal. Everything the messenger of the 
cross 2>roposes is granted infidl, as a thing that is iiidicated by 
Providence." " To attack the latter was, therefore," comments 
Goodrish, " to attack the justice of the pope's bull, and an 
indirect imputation on papal infallibility. ... In Spain it be- 
came necessary for all who would write a history of the New 
World to extol Columbus and the Church." 

In the " Memorials of Columbus," a collection of authentic 
documents, whose value is glowingly stated by the one who 
edited them and wrote the historical memoir, D. Gio. Batista 



6 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

Spotorno, as " a treasure which contains the diplomatic history 
of the discovery of America, and of Christopher Columbus ; 
that is, of the most memorable event which had occurred for 
ages, and of a hero who reflects the highest honour on Genoa, 
on Italy, and on Europe," — in this book will be found the famous 
Bull, of which the following is an extract : " And in order that 
you may undertake more freely and boldly the charge of so 
great an affair, given to you with the liberality of apostolic 
grace, "We of our own motion, and not at your solicitation, nor 
upon petition presented to us upon this subject by other persons 
in your name, but of our pure will and certain knowledge, and 
with the plenitude of apostolic power, by the authority of God 
omnipotent granted to Us through blessed Peter, and of the 
vicarship of Jesus Christ, which we exercise upon earth, by the 
tenor of the presents, give, concede and assign for ever to you, 
and to the kings of Castile and Leon, your successors, all the 
islands and mainlands discovered and which may hereafter be 
discovered, towards the west and south, with all their 
dominions, cities, castles, places and towns, and with all their 
rights, jurisdictions, and appurtenances, whether the lands and 
islands found, or that shall be found, be situated towards India, 
or towards any other part whatsoever; and we make, constitute 
and depute you, and your aforesaid heirs and successors, lords 
of them, with full, free and absolute power and authority and 
jurisdiction : drawing, however, and fixing a line from the 
Arctic pole, viz., from the north, to the antarctic pole, viz., to 
the south ; which line must be distant from any one of the 
islands whatsoever, vulgarly called the Azores and Cape de Verde 
islands, a hundred leagues towards the west and south — '" 

It will be gratifying to Americans to see the disposition that 
was made of their country ; a disposition that the Roman Catholic 
power evidently regards as final and irrevocable. The author 
before quoted, Barry, may, I think, be said to interpret the views 
of the Romish hierarchy, when he reasons that " the question is 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 7 

not concerning an international interest, or of an affair to 
regulate for Castile, but about interests of vital importance to 
Catholicity, to the salvation of souls, and to the extension of 
the kingdom of Jesus Christ. . . . And here we see visibly," 
he continues, " the participation of the Church in the discovery, 
and where we perceive her agency, in the benediction given by 
Innocent III. to the enterprise of his countryman. . . . Rome 
comprehended Columbus. Now to comprehend is, in a certain 
sense, to become equal to. All the sympathies of the Holy Father 
and of the Sacred College, were in favour of Columbus." That 
these "sympathies " remain unchanged, is shown by his further 
words, as well as by a mass of outside evidence : " When lately 
in Rome we rendered homage to the moral and religious purity 
of Columbus, and declared his grandeur, our voice received, in 
the places of the pontificate, only friendliness and encourage- 
ment." Without substantial support from head-quarters, imless 
he was acting with a warrant, he could scarcely proceed with so 
much confidence and affirm : " Evidently God chose Columbus 
as a messenger of salvation ; " and " The time for his historic 
rehabilitation has come at last," removing aU uncertainty and 
suspense on this head by declaring at once : " The necessity of a 
new, full and complete history of the New World has been 
much felt ; this necessity, which so much resembles a duty, has 
been deeply felt in the Eternal City ; and we proceed to respond 
to it." Not content with saying that " it is too much forgotten 
that the work efiected by Columbus is unequaled in history," 
he reaches a Roman Catholic climax by exclaiming : " We 
declare before God, who knows it, and before men, who do not 
know it, that Christopher Columbus was a Saint." 

In the words that the late King Alfonso is reported to have 
uttered in course of conversation with Clarence Winthrop 
Bowen, we see that the modern estimate of an occupant of the 
Spanish throne coincides perfectly with the joint estimate of 
Spain and Rome in the past, in regard to the immense value of 



8 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

this discovery. The two persons mentioned were speaking 
abovit the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of 
America by Columbus, and the king thought that nine years 
was a long time to spend in arranging for the celebration, but 
perhaps not too long considering its importance. " It is an 
event," he said, " in which all the world would be interested, 
and in Avhich the leading nations might unite. I would do all 
in my power to make it a brilliant festival ; but, considering the 
pre-eminent part that Spain took in the discovery of America, 
I claim that she should certainly be allowed to have the 
celebration within her own borders. Italy gave birth to 
Columbus, it is true. Other countries considered his ideas only 
visionary schemes. But it was Spain alone that furnished the 
means fcr carrying into practical effect what would otherwise 
have been only a dream. To Spain alone, therefore, belongs 
the credit of the discovery." 

A few panegyrics of Columbus by modern authors and 
historians may appropriately be culled and laid before the 
reader, as further evidence of the value ascribed to this 
discovery, for it is obvious that Columbus is extolled solely for 
that, and that his elevation from obscurity is due to that one 
achievement alone. 

In Bancroft's " History of the United States " stand the 
words : " The enterprise of Columbus, the most memorable 
maritime enterprise in the history of the world, formed between 
Europe and America the communication that will never cease " 
Arthur Helps, in his "Life of Columbus," says that "perhaps 
there are few of the great personages in history who have been 
more talked about and written about than Christopher 
Columbus, the discoverer of America." To quote another 
passage of his : " Modern familiarity with navigation renders it 
difficult for us to appreciate adequately the greatness of the 
enterprise which was undertaken by the discoverei-s of the New 
World." But the writer obviously fails to see that the ancient 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 



familiarity with navigation, as evinced by the Norsemen, rendered 
it surprising and well-nigh incomprehensible that Columbus 
could have encountered so much difficulty in finding ships, 
crews, the necessary outfit for a voyage, and in managing the 
undertaking. The accounts read as if this might have been the 
first voyage on record, from any port ; as risky, altogether, as 
the first balloon ascension. 

Washington Irving, in his "Life of Columbus," in describing 
Columbus' state, after land had been descried, on that first 
voyage, remarks : '' He had secured himself a glory which 
must be as durable as the world itself," but it is not quite plain 
whether this is the author's reflection or Columbus', or a blending 
of the two. 

But for Christopher Columbus substitute the Norsemen ; for 
Spain substitute the Scandinavian North ; for the date 1492 
substitute the dates 982-85 ; for San Salvador and San Domingo 
substitute Greenland, Labrador, Nova Scotia, Rhode Island, 
and Massachusetts ; for a discoverer of two islands, who did not 
explore the mainland to any extent, substitute the discoverers 
who traversed the eastern coast of America from Labrador to 
Florida, just as their forefathers had traversed the western 
coast of Europe from the Hebrides to Africa ; for a discoverer 
who stole his information, thus buying himself name and 
repute at the Spanish court, and who went to America in search 
of gold and slaves, also to appropriate new territory for the 
preaching of the Gospel, substitute the genuine discoverers, 
who were adepts in the art of navigation, who had already 
established so many colonies and formed so many governments 
that this had become an old story to them, and who being 
above the incentives of lucre and Papal patronage, devoted 
themselves to industry, commerce between the newlj" discovered 
continent, Greenland, Iceland, and Scandinavia, and such a 
thorough and intelligent exploration of it as to rouse the 
cupidity of southern Europe, five hvmdred years after their 



lo The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

discovery, when an opportunity offered iu the person of 
Columbus, for its states to avail themselves of it, and to confirm 
the fact of their prior discovery, in documents so reliable and 
authentic as to convince the modern world, after three hundred 
years of systematic concealment, of garbled history and fraud 
on the part of the Roman Catholic Church and its adherents ; 
and when these substitutions are made, does the value of the 
discovery become less ? Does it not rather become greater as 
showing how deeply those wearing the mantle of holiness, as 
well as the royal purple, have been willing to perjure themselves 
for the gains ? And these men have intoned for ages : 
"■ Beware of covetousness ! " Is it the duty of all '' the leading 
nations to unite," to use King Alfonso's words, to celebrate 
this fraud of half a millenary's duration, and by publicly 
recognizing the claim of Columbus' discovery gratify the 
covetousness of the Mother Church by turning the American 
Republic over to it, as its spiritual and temporal property ? 

A moment's attention to another reading of this fact in 
history, from a northern instead of a southern standpoint, wiU 
show that the discovery in itself loses nothing by a change of 
characters. In the first part of the latest history of Sweden, 
under the joint authorship of Drs. Montelius and Hildebrand, 
Professors Weibull, Alin, Boethius, and others, there occurs 
this passage, from the pen of Dr. Oscar Montelius : *' We have 
seen how the Northerners, during the Viking period, carried 
their victorious arms to most of the countries of Europe. All 
the intercourse between the North and the rest of the world 
during this time, however, was not warlike, for peaceful com- 
merce was even then of an importance, which one has been 
but too much inclined to under- estimate. Foremost among 
peaceful voyages during the Viking period must we remember 
the bold voyages of discovery which the Norsemen then made. 
Already have we mentioned how they settled Iceland ; from 
there they found first Greenland and afterwards Vinland, or the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. ii 

north-eostern part of what we now call the United States of 
America. To the ISTorthmen is due the great glory, so far as 
history knows, of having first, among all the people of Europe, 
discovered America, and it was half a millenary before the 
inhabitants of southern Europe found their way to the new 
world, possibly led there by the sagor of the Norsemen's 
voyages." 

Another Swedish historian, A, E. Holmberg, in his " No-.'se- / 
men during the Pagan Period," ascribes the same glory to the 
discovery : " The treatise on the naval operations of our fore- 
fathers we can scarcely end more suitably than with the 
mention of their most daring naval exploit — an event, which 
not only in and of itself, but also through its results, shreAvdly 
concealed until our time, is of world-historic importance, I 
mean the discovery of America hy the Norsemen toward the close 
of 1)00. The matter, it is true, was some years ago explained 
and made known ; the details of it, however, may in general 
be less known. From childhood we have all heard that the 
discovery of the new world was exclusively Columbus' exploit. 
His glory in defying prejudices and overcoming the difficulties 
and obstacles that rose against such an undertaking no people 
and no age can diminish ; but nevertheless, the discovery of 
this world was never his; the glory of this belongs to the 
Norsemen alone." 

Or if we turn to English authors, Wheaton, Laing, Pigott, | 
Beamish, the Howitts, Carlyle, all credit the fact of the Norse ' 
discovery, and several of them, together with Scandinavian 
writers and historians of note, give so much testimony with 
regard to Columbus' visit to Iceland, that I reserve the im- 
portant passages relating to this secret visit of the ambitious 
and unscrupulous southerner, so pregnant with results, for the 
chapter that is to treat of it exclusively. The third chapter 
contains the evidence of the Norse discovery, taken from as 
many authors as has been found practicable, and giving the 



12 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

opinions that are of the most value on this important subject. 
For the sources of all the knowledge that has as yet been 
derived, the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of 
this book. 

The American author, Aaron Goodrich, traces the sequence 
between the greatness of the true discoverers and the greatness 
of their discovery, showing that one was attributable to the 
other: " While the greater part of Europe was plunged in the 
intellectual darkness which pervaded the middle ages, Avhilc 
the monk in his cloister toiled laboriously during a life-time to 
perpetuate some one work of saintly or classic lore, and the 
masses were ignorant, superstitious, the slaves of feudal lords 
and barons scarcely less ignorant than themselves, a people 
flourished in the extreme north, with whom enterprise and 
freedom were neither dead nor stagnant, who possessed scien- 
tific knowledge and applied the same to practical purposes ; a 
people simple, fearless and energetic, republicans in practice if 
not in name, with whom chieftains were the fathers and pro- 
tectors of their followers, sharing their perils and respecting 
their rights ; a pagan people indeed, worshippers of Odin and 
Thor, believers in the joys of Walhalla, yet doers of deeds so 
noble as to be worthy the most enlightened Christian : such were 
the Northmen ; such their simple records, which bear every im- 
press of truth, prove them to have been. Issuing from an Asiatic 
liive, they early overran Norway and Sweden ; their language, 
the old Danish or Ddnsk tu7iga, is now preserved only in Ice- 
land, which they colonized in the year 875 ; in 985 they re- 
discovered and colonized Greenland ; the same year the 
American continent proper was discovered by them, and, 
during the first years of the eleventh century, they made 
thither frequent voyages, residing, for periods of several years, 
at difi"erent times, in what is now called New England." 

The Norwegian-American writer, Professor R. B. Anderson, 
in his stirring book "America not Discovered by Columbus,'' 



OR, HON'OUR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE. 1 3 



traces this sequence still further, namely, to the result that has 
now become the modem point of issue, the Columbian or 
bogus discovery, which was based upon the Norse one : " It 
•was the first settlement of Iceland by the Norsemen, and the 
constant voyages between this island and Norway, that led to 
the discovery, first of Greenland and then of America ; and it 
is due to the high intellectual standing and fine historical taste 
of the Icelanders that records of these voyages were kept, first 
to instruct Columbus how to find America, and afterward to 
solve for us the mysteries concerning the discovery of this 
continent." 

It is indisputably true that the value of the discovery is 
sufficient to command the attention of all ages ; the truth as to 
the discoverer remains to be demonstrated, and that is the 
proud task of the present age, nay, of this coming year, for the 
American people should not let 1887, the year of the National 
Exhibition on English soil, draw to a close, without a national 
declaration of the truth of the discovery of their country by the 
Norsemen, a public acknowledgment of the debt of gratitude 
in which they stand to the Scandinavian North, for which they 
are indebted for the principles of liberty, " for the hardiest 
elements of progress in the United States," according to Ben- 
jamin Lossing, and an equally public repudiation of the false 
claim of Columbus, throwing ofi", with the same indignant 
scorn as once the Mother country, when it attempted oppres- 
sion, the clutch of the Mother Church and its obedient vassal 
Spain, to whom the Republic can charge the slavery that 
blackened its annals as a nation for so many years, the terrible 
Avar arising from that pernicious system introduced by Spain 
and largely kept alive l)y the Eoman Catholic democratic party. 
North and South, all this evil in the past, and to whom, in the 
future, it would inevitably owe its destruction as a nation, the 
subversion of its free Constitution, and its transformation into a 
huge benighted territory indistinguishable in its mental and 



14 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

moral attributes from Suuth America, the southern half of 
what the Church of Eome fondly looks forward to as the 
Roman Catholic hemisphere, — if the claim that Columbus dis- 
covered America should be admitted by it, as a nation. 

This is the reason why it is necessary for the truth, as to the 
discovery of America, to be established imniediatehj . The 
near approach, of the four hundredth anniversary of the 
landing and alleged discovery of Columbus, has revived the 
subject in the public mind and the floating rumours, occasion- 
ally taking a concrete form in the American newspapers, of a 
grand commemoration of the event, convert it into a subject 
that must soon be decided one way or the other, and the 
approaching date, October 12th, 1892, into the date of a most 
momentous decision, one that will fairly shake the world witli 
its reverberation ! This approaching anniversary of a fraudu- 
lent discovery, the resolution of the United States with regard 
to it, their celebration of it, or their refusal to celebrate it, 
will test the sincerity and earnestness of the work of which 
the year 1876 was the glorious centennial; it will decide 
whether the date 1892 is to obliterate the date 1776, whether 
the Government, claiming to be purely secular, which has from 
the hour the Constitution was framed refused to admit the 
word " God " into it, will then be willing to insert both God 
and Pope in it ; whether the country that indignantly threw off 
all allegiance in 1776 will then yield allegiance to the foulest 
tyrant the world has ever had, the Roman Catholic power ! 

As straws show which way the wind blows, it is worth while 
to note these newspaper bits : " It is proposed to have a World's 
Fair in Chicago in 1892, in commemoration of the foui 
hundredth anniversary of the landing of Columbus in 
America." Another scrap indicated that the matter of a cele- 
bration, of some kind, of this event was under consideration, in 
Washington. Another ran thus : " The Spaniards have not 
yet made up their minds how to celebrate the four hundredth 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 15 

anniversary of the sailing of Columbus ; " which was contro- 
verted by the following programme: " It is proposed in Spain 
to start a fleet of ships, representing all maritime nations, from 
the little port of Palos, in Spain, on August 3rd, 1892, the 
four hundredth anniversary of the sailing of Columbus, and to 
have the fleet sail to San Salvador over the route taken by the 
great discoverer." Another significant scrap made its appearance 
in an editorial column : " As an inducement to celebrate the fourth 
centenary of Columbus' landing, Americans are offered a 
chance to gaze upon the identical chains with which Eobadella 
loaded the wrists of Columbus when the great seaman was sent 
back to Spain a prisoner in 1500. It is an Italian chevalier 
who owns these dumb but eloquent articles, and to secure them 
he made costly journeys to Spain and America. For twenty years 
he has kept the matter a profound secret, having personal reasons 
for this reticence. But now they will be shown, and managers 
of dime museums who know their business will take the hint." 
But here is something that intimates the absolute destruction 
of the plans mentioned : " Just as we are talking about a cele- 
bration of the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' 
discovery of land on the western hemisphere, some Danish 
ethnologists are trying to prove that the Genoese navigator 
had borrowed all he knew from an old Iceland manuscript of 
the seventh century,^ in which this continent was fully described." 
The phrase "are trying to prove" hardly fits the case; the in- 
contestable fact is that the " old Iceland manuscript " referred 
to is in the possession of the Danish Government, and that the 
Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, in Copenhagen, have 
placed its contents before the modern world, in the splendid 
work " Antiquitates Aniericanse," by Professor Rafn, in which 
the narratives of the Norse voyages to Ameri"a, besides being 
reproduced in the old Icelandic, are rendered into the Latin 
and Danish languages. An English translation having been 
* The wroug date. 



i6 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

made of these by Xortli Ludlow Beaniis!', this in turn has been 
reproduced by the Prince Society in Boston, under the title : 
1 "Voyages of the Northmen to America," published in 1877. 
^ This is only one of several translations into English, so that 
the contents of that portion of the " Codex Flatoiensis " relating 
to the discovery of America is in reality accessible to all. In 
Samuel Laing's preliminary dissertation to his translation of the 
1 *' Heimskringla,'\the famous chronicle of the kings of JSTorway 
•-■ written by Snorre Sturleson)^ which also contains, in the saga of 
Olaf Tryggvason, historical testimony of the discovery of 
America by the Northmen, is to be found an account of this 
i priceless volume : 'The Flateyar Annall, or Codex Flatoiensis,' 
/ by far the most important of Icelandic manuscripts, takes its 
^ name from the island Flato, in Bredeliord in Iceland, where it 
had been long preserved, and where Bishop Swendson of 
Skalholt purchased it, about 1650, from the owner Jonas 
Torfeson, for King Frederick III., giving in exchange for it the 
perpetual exemption from land-tax of a small estate of the 
owner. The manuscript is in large folio, beautifully written on 
parchment. On the first page stands : ' This book is owned 
by Ion Hakonson. Here are first songs ; then how Norway 
was inhabited or settled ; then of Eric Vidforla (the far-traveled) ; 
thereafter of Olaf Tryggvason, and all his deeds ; then next the 
saga of King Olaf the Saint, with all his deeds and therewith 
the sagas of the Orkney Earls ; then the saga of Swerrer and 
thereafter the saga of Hakon the Old, with the sagas of King 
Magnus his son ; then are deeds of Einer Sokkeson of Green- 
land, thereafter of Helge and Ulf the Bad ; then begin annals 
from the time the world was made, showing all to the present 
time that is come. The priest Ion Thordarson has written from 
Eric Vidforla, and the two sagas of the Olafs ; and priest 
Magnus Thorhallsson has written from thence, and also what is 
written before, and has illuminated the whole. God Alniiglity 
and the Holy Virgin bless those who wrote, and hi in who 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 17 

dictated.' . . . The Codex Flatoieusis is not an original work 
by one author, but a collection of sagas transcribed from older 
manuscripts, and arranged in so far chronologically that the 
accounts are placed under the reign in which the events they 
tell of happened, although not connected with it or with each 
other. Under the saga of Olaf Tryggvason are comprehended 
the sagas of the Feroe Islands ; of the Vikings of Jomsburg ; of 
Erik Red and Leif his son, the discoverers of Greenland and 
Vinland ; and the voyages of Karlsefne to Vudand, and all the 
circumstances, true or false, of their adventures." 

As for Columbus having " borrowed all he knew " from this 
old Icelandic manuscript, the same author, Laing, to whom the 
world is deeply indebted for enlightenment on this hidden 
history, has important testimony to give. " The discovery of 
America or Vinland, in the 11th century, by the same race of 
enduring, enterprising seamen, is not less satisfactorily established 
by documentary evidence than the discovery and colonization 
of Greenland ; but it rests entirely upon documentary evidence, 
which cannot, as in the case of Greenland, be substantiated by 
anything to be discovered in America. . . . All that can be 
proved, or that is required to be proved, for establishing the 
priority of the discovery of America by the Northmen, is that 
the saga or traditional account of these voyages in the 11th 
century was committed to writing at a known date, viz. between 
1387 and 1395, in a manuscript of unquestioned authenticity, 
of which these particular sagas or accounts relative to Vinland 
form but a small portion ; and that this known date was eighty 
years before Columbus visited Iceland to obtain nautical infor- 
mation, viz. in 1477, when he must have heard of this written 
account of Vinland ; and it was not till 1492 that he discovered 
America. This simple fact established on documents altogether 
incontrovertible, is sufficient to prove all that is wanted to be 
proved, or can be proved, and is much more clearly and ably 
stated by Thormod Torfseus, the great antiquary of the last 





1 8 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

century, than it has been since, in his very rare little tract, 
♦Historia Vinlandiic Antiques,' 1707." 

A credibility is thus given to this one manuscript from the 
North, not only by Laing, but by Alexander von Humboldt and 
hosts of others, that the collective testimony of the south lacks : 
whole libraries of lives of Columbus and histories of the New 
World weigh as nothing against it. The intrinsic truth of its 
written words gain an absolute authority from the integrity of 
the race from which it issued, Iceland has been the island 
refuge of this truth ; Iceland has preserved it sacredly, and 
now transmits it to the Eepublic that she, in her own palmiest 
days as a Eepublic, conduced to found. 

American honour is at stake ! It is a national obligation 
for the American Republic to proclaim this truth and to do it 
quickly. The freest country cannot obey the behest of the 
most slavish one ! America and Spain cannot be linked together 
in eternal union ! the land that is the synonym of progress 
bound to the land that is the synonym of decay ! The germ 
of republicanism, of liberty, was planted in America by the 
North, the germ of slavery by the South, by Spain and the 
Church of Rome. Which germ shall be allowed to grow 1 
Both cannot live on American soil ! The history of Europe is 
the history of this conflict between the North and the South, 
between free-minded Scandinavia and the arch-tyrant Rome. 
In Europe Rome has virtually conquered, for it succeeded in 
converting or Christianizing all the nations that comprise 
Europe, including the Scandinavians, who offered the most 
stubborn resistance, but were finally obliged to succumb, albeit 
five hundred years after all the others had bowed under the yoke 
of Rome. The struggle is now to be continued in the United 
States. The double discovery of America is symbolical of this, 
and is also the signal for contention. The true discovery was 
by men from the North, and of that portion of the land lying 
in the north , the alleged or false discovery was by men from 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 19 

Spain, iin.l of islands south even of the continent. In the one 
case no appropriation, in the other an immediate deed of the 
land, nay, of the whole hemisphere, by the Pope to the 
Sovereigns of Spain. The Norsemen named the land after its 
good qualities, Vinland ; the Spaniards, according to the base 
use they meant to make of it : " The Land of the Holy Cross, 
or New World." The Spaniards intended America to be the 
empire of the Pope in a sense in which Europe had failed to 
be it, the perfection of the original design, matured in the 
second and third centuries, having been impaired by the pagans 
of the North. But the Norsemen were in their graves; the 
wholesale Christianizing of Scandinavia had put their very 
spirit, soul, in the grave. What a divine retribution it would 
be upon this impious race, according to the Catholic way of 
reasoning, to steal their discovery, appropriate the land fchat 
iliey had found and convert it into what Europe should have 
been, ivonld have been, if Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip II., 
Charlemagne and a few others could have completed the work 
of exterminating heretics ! 

The Koman Catholic, J. J. Barry, unwraps the motive, the 
forced tendency, from all disguise, and says plainly : " The first 
object of the Discovery, disengaged from every human consider- 
ation, was, therefore, the glorification of the Redeemer and the 
extension of His Church. Historians have hitherto left this 
circumstance imnoticed, or in a state of vague confusion." The 
Protestant, Arthur Oilman, in his "History of the American 
People," poetizes on a well-worn theme, the expression of the 
facts of the case having been given by the other, for no one 
can know so well as a Roman Catholic what the intentions of 
the Holy See are with regard to the United States. To quote 
Oilman's words: "Among the great events that marked the 
world's revival from the sleep of the Dark Ages, none was more 
remarkable than the revelation of the American continent. 
From the moment when the ship of Columbus was sighted off 
2 



20 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

the coast of Spain, bearing the proofs of liis discovery, the 
name America became the synonym of wealth, of adventure, of 
freedom." 

There is not the slightest warrant for coupling the words 
wealth, adventure (in the good sense) and freedom with the 
name of Columbus. Sterility, poverty, slavery have invariably 
followed in the wake of Kome and of Spain. They would have 
done so in this instance, the United States would have displayed 
the features of Spanish civilization, had it not been for the 
principles of freedom the Norsemen infused into English blood 
and which found tlieir fullest expression in the American 
colonists, leading them to declare independence. But the 
American Kepublic has always been divided against itself : the 
northern states respected freedom, defended it for themselves 
and others ; the southern states advocated slavery and fought 
for its preservation; we have the freedom-loving North and 
slavery-worshipping Spain again typified in Boston and New 
Orleans. 

Samuel Laing sees clearly that these are the only two forces 
that have been at work in Europe, for spiritual and temporal 
supremacy, and he embodies one, the enslaving force, in the 
Komans, and the other, the freeing force, in the Scandinavians. 
His words convey the whole truth of the situation as regards 
the past : " Two nations only have left permanent impressions 
of their laws, civil polity, social arrangements, spirit, and 
character on the civilized communities of modern times — the 
Romans, and the handful of Northern people from the countries 
beyond the Elbe, which had never submitted to the Roman 
yoke, who, issuing in small, piratical bands from the 5th to the 
10th century, under the names of Saxons, Danes, Northmen, 
plundered, conquered and settled on every European coast from 
the White Sea to Sicily." What impression was left he describes 
in a way that leaves no doubt : '* Wheresoever these people from 
beyond the pale and influence of the old Roman empire, and 



OR, Honour to whom HOxNOUR is Due. 21 

of the later cliurcli empire of Kome, either settled, mingled or 
marauded, they have loft permanent traces in society of their 
laws, institutions, character, and spirit. Pagan and barbarian 
as they were, they seem to have carried with them something 
more natural, sometliing more suitable to the social wants of man, 
than the laws and institutions formed under the Roman power. 
What traces have we in Britain of the Romans 1 A few military 
roads, and doubtful sites of camps, posts, and towns— a few 
traces of public works, and all indicating a despotic military 
occupation of the country, and none a civilized condition of the 
mass of the inhabitants — alone remain in England to tell the 
world that here the Roman power flourished during 400 years." 
There was thus a despotic military occupation of the country ; 
that there was a despotic spiritual occupation of the mind 
follows as a matter of course : " The history of modern civi- 
lization resolves itself, in reality, into the history of the moral 
influence of these two nations. All would have been Roman 
in Europe at this day in principle and social arrangement — 
Europe would have been, like Russia or Turkey, one vast den 
of slaves, with a few rows in its amphitheatre of kings, nobles, 
and churchmen, raised above the dark mass of humanity beneath 
them, if three boats from the north of the Elbe had not landed 
in Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, 1400 years ago, and been 
followed by a succession of similar boat expeditions of the same 
people, marauding, conquering, and settling, during 600 years, 
viz. from 449 to 1066. All that men hope for of good govern- 
ment and future improvement in their physical and moral con- 
dition—all that civilized men enjoy at this day of civil, religious, 
and political liberty — the British constitution, representative 
legislature, the trial by jury, security of property, freedom of 
mind and person, the influence of public opinion over the con- 
duct of public affiiirs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, 
the spirit of the age — all that is or has been of value to man in 
modern times as a member of society either in Europe or in 



22 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

America, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our 
shores by these Northern barbarians." 

A strong and eloquent statement this, which should be 
written in letters of fire in every American heart, to inspire 
them with deep gratitude to their true ancestors — ancestors 
which England, as a nation, has never honoured properly, 
wherefore the duty has devolved upon Americans, who, being 
more nearly allied to the Norsemen in soul-qualities, can alone 
understand them and appreciate thom as they deserve. That 
ihey were the first Europeans who landed on American shores 
was pregnant with good to us ; this made "the name America 
the synonym of wealth, of adventure, of freedom," and not the 
false tidings borne by Columbus to Spain of a discovery of 
which he would have been incapable but for stolen infor- 
mation. 

And the other force, which we can best recognize under the 
name, Borne, what had it accomplished 1 Let Dr. Felix Oswald 
tell : " A thousand years' interregnum of science, Faith usurping 
the throne of Keason, every branch of human knowledge 
withered by the poison of supernaturalism, literary activity 
limited to the production of homilies and miracle-legends, 
education devoted to the suppression of all natural instincts, 
and the substitution of submissive belief for the love of truth 
and free inquiry. Decadence of the fine arts, natural science 
merged in a deluge of superstition." I doubt if in the whole 
range of literature could be found a more accurate summing- 
up of the work wrought by these two forces than that pre- 
sented by these authors. Dr. Oswald insists, and with 
right, that "the misery of the Middle Ages was due, 
not to the supernatural, but to the anti-natural, tendency 
of the Christian religion," affirming, most truly, that "the 
pagan gods were the deified powers of nature, the patrons of 
mariners, shepherds, and husbandmen," while " the Christian 
"ods were the deified enemies of nature." The evil, as ho 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 23 

shows, reached appalling proportions, for " on the altar of her 
anti-natural idol, the Christian Church has sacrificed the lives 
of eighteen millions of the noblest and bravest of our fellow- 
men." His great work, " The Secret of the East," is a complete 
revelation of the hideous results of this rule of darkness falsely 
called "the light of Christianity." "Has the rule of the 
Church," he asks, " furthered the moral progress of the forty 
generations whose wisest, manliest, noblest, and bravest men 
Avere systematically weeded out, to enforce the survival of 
idiots and hypocrites? For thirteen centuries, the rack, the 
stake, and the cross were leagued against nature and mankind.' 
Hallam more than confirms Oswald's assertions : " A cloud of 
ignorance overspread the whole face of the Church, hardly 
broken by a few glimmering lights, who owe almost the whole 
of their distinction to the surrounding darkness. ... I cannot 
conceive of any state of society more adverse to the intellectual 
improvement of mankind than one which admitted no middle 
line between dissoluteness and fanatical mortifications. . . , No 
original writer of any merit arose ; and learning may be said to 
have languished in a region of twilight for the greater part of a 
thousand years. . . . In 992, it was asserted that scarcely a 
single person was to be found, in Kome itself, who knew the 
first elements of letters. Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, 
about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of 
salutation to another." 

Nor was this all ; not content with debasing and enfeebling 
the mind, the Romish religionists changed the very face of 
nature ; this was to be made as arid and barren as the soul — 
the Christian revision of the Creator's work, for, as Oswald 
says, "the dogmas of the Christian Church have cost the world 
three million square miles of lands, which once were the garden 
spots of this earth, but which have been turned into deserts by 
the neglect of rational agricvdture and the influence of a creed 
which laboured to withdraw the attention of mankind from 



24 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

secular to post-mortem concernments." In support of this 
statement he cites Professor Marsh : " The fairest and fruit- 
fullest portions of the Roman Empire, precisely that portion of 
terrestrial surface, in short, which about the commencement of 
the Christian era, was endowed with the greatest superiority of 
soil, climate and position, which had been carried to the highest 
pitch of physical improvement — is now completely exhausted 
of its fertility. A territory larger than all Europe, the abun- 
dance of which sustained in bygone centuries a population 
scarcely inferior to that of the whole Christian morld at the 
present day, has been entirely withdrawn from human use, or, 
at best, is thinly inhabited. . . . There are regions where the 
operation of causes, set in action by man, has brought the face of 
the earth to a desoldion almost as complete as that of the moon ; 
and though within that brief space of time which we call 'the 
historical period,' they are known to have been covered with 
luxuriant woods, verdant pastures and fertile meadows, they 
are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can 
they become again fitted for his use except through great geolo- 
gical changes, or other agencies, over which we have no control. 
. . . Another era of equal improvidence would reduce this 
earth to such a condition of impoverished productiveness as to 
threaten the depravation, barbarism, and, perhaps, even the 
extinction of the human species." 

But, reply many Americans, with "that sublime trust in the 
grand destiny of the American people" for which they are 
noted, this could never happen in the United States ; Roman 
Catholics here are not Avhat they are in Italy or Spain ; the 
Romish Church itself is becoming permeated with the spirit of 
our American institutions, of freedom. This pleasant illusion, 
which, Carrie 1 one degree farther, would invite the contagion of 
the spiritual Black Death that ravaged Europe for a thousand 
years, and left the taint of the foul disease in the mental 
organism of all descendants — has blinded American eyes to the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 25 

fact that Roman Catholicism has already made terrible strides 
in the Eepublic, that the freedom of American institutions has 
incalculably favoured its advance, saving it the trouble of 
forcing its way with the sword, as it was compelled to do in 
Europe ; it is securing a bloodless victorj^, and its exultation, 
although perhaps premature, is not altogether unfounded. This 
insolent power has certainly met with no rebuke from the 
people or Government of the United States, not the slightest 
check ; its Jesuits have not been expelled, its monasteries and 
ecclesiastical establishments have not been forbidden, nor its 
parochial schools closed; it enjoys the absolute freedom of the 
press, and its editors can boast openly of their speedy appro- 
priation of the American Republic for the seat of Romish 
despotism ; the ancient Greeks, the Moors, the Albigenses, the 
Saxons, the Scandinavians, all made resistance, the citizens of 
the United States make none. How shall the Roman Catholics 
construe this, if not favourably to their plans? Freedom to 
them is valueless from the American point of view, as the 
atmosphere that will alone admit of the growth of a great and 
powerful nation, founded in the highest principles of human 
right and justice, but inestimable as affording them the fullest 
opportunity to undermine this nation, and blast not only its 
hopes, but the hopes of the world. Seizing the United States, 
the Church of Rome can mock and defy all the states of Europe 
that have always prevented its complete temporal sovereignty. 
The progress it has already made is by no means to be despised ; 
as a writer in the " Boston Transcript " laments : *' We look with 
dismay upon the appearance in our streets of fat, heavy-eyed 
priests and coifed nuns;" from having had, at the end of the 
last century — to quote some statistics given by an orthodox 
Russian author in his book entitled " Roman Catholicism in 
the United States" — 1950 churches for 3,500,000 people, or 
one church for every 1700 persons, in 1870 there were over 
72,000 churches for 38,000,000, or one church for every 529 



26 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

persons; "so "while the popuhitiou increased eleven times the 
number of churches increased thirty-seven times;" he says 
with satisfaction, and Americans must admit, though with 
horror, that " the growth of Catholicism in the United States 
for the last hundred years, has been, indeed, bewildering ; in 
1776 there were in that country about 25,000 Catholics all 
told, or 1-1 20th part of all the inhabitants, and now there are 
over 7,000,000 of them, or one-seventh of the whole population." 

The words of Froude should be read by those who are not 
afraid to risk a further experiment : " The New World was 
first offered to the holders of the old traditions. They were the 
husbandmen first chosen for the new vineyard, and blood and 
desolation were the only fruits which they reared upon it. In 
their hands it was becoming a kingdom, not of God, but of the 
devil, and a sentence of blight went out against them and 
against their works. How fatally it has worked, let modern 
Spain and Spanish America bear witness." 

But Roman Catholicism undergoes a change on American 
soil, still persist those who have unlimited faith in the passive 
influence of American ideas ; an Asiatic serpent, fostered in 
Indian Buddhism, the source of religious or Christian pessimism, 
as Oswald affirms, will have all his venom extracted, his pro- 
pensity to coil and crush, by simply basking in a well-cultivated 
American garden or twining around its fruit-trees. But •' it 
has long been the proud but most unholy boast of the Roman 
Church that she never changes," writes H. F. Barnard in the 
" Index," and then goes to the case in point : " Papal indulgence 
was the rock on which the Christian Church split three hundred 
and lifty years ago ; yet on this same question of indulgence, 
Rome has not altered one jot or tittle of her pretensions," which 
he demonstrates by extracts from the "Messenger of St. 
Joseph's Union," to all the members of which Papal indulgence 
has been granted by Pope Leo XIII., and which advertises the 
sale of masses at one dollar each, thereby doing a thriving 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 27 

trade. A few extracts taken from the pastoral published at the 
fourth Provincial Council at Cincinnati, March 19th, 1882, will 
show in how far the Romish Church has changed its tenets 
or adopted American habits of thought. "A systematic and 
combined effort, both in Europe and America, is being made 
to secularize religion, and to substitute for God and religion 
science and material progress. It is claimed that all men are 
'free and equal,' and imder that cry religion and law are 
assailed. . . . JSTor are all men equal. . . . This is in the nature of 
things and must be, as it is ordained by God that some shall 
rule and some shall be ruled. Those who are appointed to rule 
have certain rights that subjects have not. Hence kings and 
magistrates, and bishops and priests, are appointed to rule; if to 
rule, then they are above those whom they rule. . . . With the 
popular doctrine that all men are equal, there is steadily 
growing the doctrine that ' all power is from the people,' and 
that they who exercise authority in the state do not exercise it 
as their o\vn, but as intrusted to them by the people, and upon 
this condition — that it may be recalled by the will of the same 
people by whom it was confided to them. This is not Catholic 
doctrine, nor is it the doctrine of the Scriptures, which teach : 
' By me kings reign ... by me princes rule, and the mighty 
decree justice.' ' Give ear, you that rule the people, ... for 
power is given to you by God, and strength by the Most High.' 
' Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no 
power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of 
God.' . . . There is also a growing disposition among a class of 
Catholics to teach that in some things the priest receives his 
power from the people. There is also a disposition to draw lines 
and to confine the priest within limits that neither God nor 
religion can permit. The priest is not appointed by the people, 
nor does he receive his power from the people. He receives his 
power from God, and the people are commanded to seek the 
law from his lips, ' for the priest's lips should keep knowledge.* 



28 The Icelandic Discoverers of Amkrica; 

* He that hears you hears me,' says Christ, speaking of His 
priests, ' and he that despises you despises me.' ' Go teach ' 
are words that leave no doubt as to the right of priests to 
teach, or the duty of the people to listen. . . . Governments and 
States and peoples are alike subject to the law of God equally 
as the humblest. Governments have no more right to do wrong 
than inilividuals. ' All power comes from God,' and the Church 
is the witness and guardian of revelation, as well as the inter- 
preter thereof. From her the world must learn the law of God, 
and the laAv of man must ever be subordinated to the law of 
God. It is untrue to assert that ' all power comes from tlie 
pt'ople.' ' All power comes from God,' by Avhom princes rule, 
and the mighty decree justice." 

It will not do to leave these tedious injunctions that have 
been reiterated since the second century, unchanged and un- 
amended, without including those relative to the school-question, 
the most serious annoyance the Roman Catholics have to con- 
tend with in the United States : " Eeligion must form a part of 
the education of the child. Education without religion may 
have the glitter of science, but it will not have the essence of 
virtue. Virtue must be the foundation of education, but 
religion is the foundation of virtue; hence we hold religion 
must form a part of the daily education of the child, and must 
be taught co-ordinately with science and the cognate branches. 
Deeply impressed with the necessity of training Catholic 
cliildren in the faith of their fathers, whilst waiting a change 
ill the public-school system, in which our just rights as citizens 
shall be recognized and conceded, there remains to us but to 
ai>peal to the generosity of our ever faithful people to continue 
to support our Catholic schools. We know too well how heavy 
the burden is, and how unjust it is that Catholics are forced to 
support their own schools and at the same time be taxed to 
support a public-school system from which, for conscience sake, 
tliey can receive no benefit. Wherever, theretore, throughout 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 29 

the province, Catholic schools are not yet established, pastors 
will use all diligence that they be established, being ever 
mindful of the instructions sent by the Holy See to the 
American bishops to see that Catholic schools be everywhere 
established, and that in them not only science and profane 
knowledge be taught, but also religion, the queen of all sciences. 
It is, therefore, our Avish, that the church and school go hand 
in hand ; that where the one is, there also shall the other be." 

The tendency of all this is as plain as its meaning. There is 
the denial that the principles embodied in the American Con- 
stitution are right ; the people are not free and equal ; power is 
not from the people; there should not be self-rule, but "kings 
and magistrates, and bishops and priests are appointed to rule ; " 
secular government and secular education are utterly obnoxious 
to the Romish Church, and it is bound by all the laws of its own 
organization to eradicate them. The members of this Church 
are consequently the only class of emigrants to the United States 
who are not loyal to the institutions of the country they live in, 
who do not in any sense assimilate with the principles of these • 
institutions; under the guise of American citizens the)- are actually 
traitors, only waiting for the moment when they can deal a 
death-blow to the government and rulers their mediasval super- 
stition has taught them to abhor. Their arrogance inflated and 
buoyed up by the remembrance of the historical fact that the 
power to which alone they yield allegiance was able to destroy 
the civilization of ancient Greece, that of the Moors, to sap the 
strength of Scandinavia and cause its decline, to reduce all 
Europe to a state of misery and barbarism that lasted for a 
thousand years, they regard the repetition of this atrocious work 
in the United States as an easy task, and set about it years ago 
with the confidence and precision that distinguished their 
European efforts. Conscious as Americans are of their own 
strength, the power of their own nation, they should not under- 
estimate the strength of their insidious foe, nor forget that this 



foe vanquished the Greeks, the Saxons, the Moors, the Albi- 
genses, the French Protestants, the Scandinavians, getting the 
better through their craft and hellish devices — never through 
legitimate or honest means — of whole communities and nations 
Avho cherished advanced thoughts, republican principles, who were 
free-minded, enlightened and cultivated. The history of Europe 
does not show an even and harmonious development, Christianity 
or Romanism succeeding a stateof greater barbarism and gradually 
ameliorating huma n conditions, but a violent substitution of barbar- 
ism for the civilization and enlightenment it ruthlessly quenched. 
All of these highly civilized races struggled manfully for their 
existence, and in the case of the Scandinavians, offered five 
hundred years of determined opposition to the demoniac legions 
of the Church ; but Americans make no resistance whatsoever ; 
they even praise the vampyre that has fastened upon them, as 
manifest from an editorial in the " Boston Transcript," headed 
" A Boston Cardinal," in which these words appear : " I^one 
the less should our fathers, brought up as they had been to 
abominate the Scarlet "Woman, be credited with tolerance in 
aiding the little flock of Catholics to find shelter and comfort 
and to wax strong. The history of the Church in this city is 
one of the most interesting chapters in our annals. It is 
interesting, not only as all religious experiences must be to all 
thinking men, but as showing a great social change which has 
been working on our people. The Roman Catholic Church to- 
day is great, powerful, flourishing, and perfectly organized in 
our midst, and yet it is but little over eighty years since the old 
cathedral was dedicated, and it is but seventy-five since the first 
Bishop of Boston received his consecration." 

In the nature of things the Romish power will work thus 
quietly and peaceably only for a limited space of time. The 
period of gentle and persuasive measures has obviously been 
protracted in the United States by reason of the unprecedented 
success that attended the manoeuvres of the Mother Church, so 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 31 

strangely facilitated by the unsuspecting attitude of Americans. 
"Were thej really so republican-minded, when they thus permitted 
the advance of the most monarchical of dominions ? But Mr. 
Gladstone, in his " Kome and the JSTewest Fashions in Religion," 
draws attention to the fact that another policy, the one that lias 
proved so efficacious heretofore, is contemplated, in Europe, if 
not in America : " My propositions then, as they stood, are 
these : 

" 1. That Eome has substituted for the proud boast of 

semper eadeyn, a policy of violence and change in faith. 
" 2. That she has refurbished and paraded anew every 

rusty tool she was fondly thought to have disused. 

" 3. That no one can now become her convert without 

renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his 

civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another. 

" 4. That she (Rome) has equally repudiated modern 

thought and ancient history." 
Furthermore he says : " It leads many to the painful and 
revolting conclusion that there is a fixed purpose among the 
secret inspirers of Roman policy to pursue, by the road of force, 
upon the arrival of any favourable opportunity, the favourite 
project of re-erecting the terrestrial throne of the PojDcdom, even 
if it can only be re-erected on the ashes of the city and amidst 
the Avhitening bones of the people." In confirmation of this 
horrible probability, the author cites the words of Cardinal 
Manning, in which the intention stands plainly revealed, at the 
League of St. Sebastian, on the 20th of January, 1874: " Now, 
when the nations of Europe have revolted, and when they have 
dethroned, as far as men can dethrone, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, 
and when they have made the usurpation of the Holy City a 
part of international law — when all this has been done, there is 
only one solution of the difficulty — a solution, I fear, impending 
— and that is the terrible scourge of continental Avar : a war, 
which will exceed the horrors of any of the wars of the first 



32 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

empire. I do not, see how this can be averted. And it is my 
firm conviction, that, in spite of all obstacles, the Yicar of Jesus 
Christ will be put again in his own rightful place." N'or is this 
all. " The Catholic Church," he says, " cannot be silent, it 
cannot hold its peace ; it cannot cease to preach the doctrines of 
Revelation, not only of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, but 
likewise of the Seven Sacraments, and of the Infallibility of 
the Church of God, and of the necessity of Unity, and of the 
Sovereignty, both spiritual and temporal, of the Holy See." 

There is still another threat, couched in the following words : 
" If Christian princes and their laws deviate from the law of 
God, the Church has authority from God to judge of that devia- 
tion, and hy all its poivers to enforce the correction of that 
departure from justice. 

It is more than apparent that the sins of the American Ee- 
public must far outweigh those of any Christian prince in 
Europe ; there is not a point in which the Eepublican and the 
Roman Catholic code coincide; what then is the retribution 
that the Holy See will mete out to Americans, when the time 
comes ? And why is the hour of retribution delayed ? 

Coming events hinge on the stand taken by the United States 
on the Columbus question. J. J. Barry may be considered to 
interpret literally the views of his Church when he says that 
" the first object of the Discovery, disengaged from every human 
consideration, was, therefore, the glorification of the Redeemer 
and the extension of His Church." I have quoted these words 
before, but they cannot be too forcibly impressed upon the mind. 
The object was not impeded by any uncertainty with regard to 
the discovery, for it was not to be a discovery, it was simply to 
be the claiming of lands before discovered and to which the 
route had been marked out. The Church as usual had chosen 
an infallible method. It leaves experimenting to scientists. 
Washington Irving describes the precipitate haste with which 
Pope and sovereigns took possession of the new territory, pre- 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 33 

destined for Papal rule : " In the midst of their rejoicings, the 
Spanish sovereigns lost no time in taking every measure neces- 
sary to secure their new acquisitions . . . took the immediate 
precaution to secure the sanction of the Pope (Alexander VI.) 
. . a pontiff whom some historians have stigmatized with every 
vice and crime that could disgrace humanity." The records of 
his crimes are too revolting to read ; debauchery, incest, murder, 
robbery, and assassination for the end of robbery, distinguish this 
monster's life, until by drinking, by mistake, some of the poisoned 
wine intended for nine wealthy cardinals and some other opu- 
lent persons whom he had invited to a banquet, the career of 
the infamous wretch was closed. "The present discovery," 
continues Irving, '* was a still greater achievement " (than the 
conquest of Granada) ; " it was the fulfilment of one of the 
sublime promises to the Church ; it was giving to it the heathen 
for an inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for a 
possession." A Bull was issued, dated May 2nd, 1493, " ceding 
to the Spanish sovereigns the same rights, privileges, and in- 
dulgences in respect to the newly discovered region, as had been 
accorded to the Portuguese, with regard to their African dis- 
coveries, under the same condition of planting and propagating 
the Catholic faith." 

s the American Republic disposed to consider itself tributary 
to Spain and to allow these Spanish plans to be carried out to 
the letter 1 If so, it has but to accept the Spanish and Roman 
Catholic version of the discovery and suffer these schemes to 
blot out the Ilorse discovery of America. It must then endow 
Columbus with all his prerogatives, saintship included, and 
worship his memory. It would be such a glorious thing for the 
United States to be under the charge of a tutelar saint, to have 
its St. Christopher, as Norway had its St. Olaf and Sweden its 
St. Birgitta, after they became Christianized or Romanized ! 

But as this response to Spanish demands does not lie within 
the range of human probability, what is the alternative? To 



34 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 



proclaim the fact of the Norse discovery and denounce the 
Columbian one as a deliberate fraud of the Church, devised for 
proselyting purposes. The true tendency of America was given 
Avhen the Norsemen landed on its shores ; it was a good augury 
for the future nation, for these were brave, free, high-minded 
men, men of a race who had planted the seeds of liberty in 
many a state of Europe, and who did it in this case unwittingly, 
from the mere force of their splendid nationality. 

Columbus, the bigoted Koman Catholic adventurer, who fed 
his ambition and greed on the narratives of the Norse voyages 
to America, read secretly in Iceland, strove to give the New 
World the opposite tendency, the downward tendency. Which 
shall prevail] 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 35 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE MANIFEST DUTY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THIS QUESTION. 

That deeply interesting work by William and Mary Hewitt, 
" The History and Romance of Northern Europe," opens with 
an exclamation, an indignant one : " Amongst the many 
wonders of this world, there is none greater than the blindness 
of the writers of this and other countries to the transcendent 
influence of the blood and spirit of ancient Scandinavia on the 
English character." In reading up on this subject, Mallet's 
" Northern Antiquities " is one of the first books likely to fall 
into one's hands — a pioneer work in itself —and this paragraph 
but increases the amazement : " History has not recorded the 
annals of a people who have occasioned greater, more sudden, 
or more numerous revolutions in Europe than the Scandinavians, 
or whose antiquities, at the same time, are so little known." 

So little Icnoivn ! How is that 1 The Scandinavians have 
themselves formed the early history of nearly every nation in 
Europe, of France, Switzerland, Russia, England, Scotland, 
besides forming the entire history of their own countries, — how 
can one study English history, without learning all about these 
people, or French history, without the same result, or Scotch, 
or Swiss, or Russian ? Were their achievements really so 
great, as the world takes so little note of them 1 One reads a 
little farther in this French work, which Bishop Percy was 
enterprising enough to put into English in 1847, and strikes 
upon the following passage : " It is easy to see from this short 
D 2 



36 The Icelandic Discoveuers of America; 

sketch, liow greatly tlie nations of the North have influenced the 
different fates of Europe ; and if it be worth, while to trace its 
revolutions to their causes, if the illustration of its institutions, 
of its police, of its customs, of its manners, of its laws, be a 
subject of useful and interesting inquiry ; it must be allowed, 
that the antiquities of the North, that is to say, everything 
which tends to make us acquainted with its ancient inhabitants, 
merits a share in the attention of thinking men. But to render 
this obvious by a particular example ; is it not well known 
that the most flourishing and celebrated states of Europe owe 
originally to the Northern nations, whatever liberty they now 
enjoy, either in their constitution, or in the spirit of their 
government 1 " 

Such a race so little known ? There must be some mystery 
under this ! What do English authors say about it 1 How do 
they account for it ? Grenville Pigott, in his " Scandinavian 
Mythology," says this : " The omission of any serious research 
into the religion of Odin, bymen of such profound learning, as was 
possessed by many of our early antiquarians, may, not unnaturally, 
raise a doubt in the minds of some of the degree of advantage or 
interest likely to result from an inquiry of this nature ; but a 
bi-ief account of the circumstances which attended the overthrow 
of heathenism and the introduction of Christianity in those 
countries, where the Scandinavian deities were chiefly wor- 
shipped, may otherwise explain the cause of this silence on a 
subject so likely to have invited earnest inquiry." 

This gives one an inkling of the cause, to be sure, but yet it 
remains an incomprehensible enigma how the history of the 
most remarkable race that ever trod the earth could have 
been thus buried in oblivion ! And that the English people 
know nothing about them, know nothing about their own 
ancestors, that is the strangest part of it ! But perhaps it is a 
mistake, the neglect of this subject ascribed to Great Britain as 
well as France, only a casual remark by one or two authors not 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 37 

cognizant themselves of the extent of English or French 
research. Let ns look further ; Henry Wheaton, in his 
"History of the Northmen, or Danes and Normans from the 
Earliest Times to the Conquest of England by "William of 
Normandy," makes the same comment : " Tn the following 
attempt to illustrate the early annals of the North, it has been 
the writer's aim to seize the principal points in the progress of 
society and manners in this remote period, which have been 
either entirely passed over, or barely glanced at by the national 
historians of France and England, but which throw a strong and 
clear light upon the affairs of Europe during the middle ages, 
and illustrate the formation of the great monarchies now 
constituting some of its leading states." Samuel Laing says : 
" The social condition, institutions, laws and literature of this 
vigorous, influential branch of the race, have been too much 
overlooked by our historians and political philosophers." In 
the preface to bis translation of the '' Heimskringla " he gravely 
reveals his intention of stepping in and repairing the serious 
omission of these historians and philosophers, of averting the 
consequences of their intentional neglect of certain phases and 
racial characteristics, the concomitants of early English history, 
without which there can be no intelligent reading of that 
history, and to do this he imposes upon himself the double 
work of clothing in English dress the noble work by Snorre 
Sturleson, an historian, who, in his turn, has done for England 
what England has failed to do for itself, by writing his 
" Chronicle of the Kings of Norway,'' kings, many of them, who 
played an important role in England and Scotland, — and of 
composing the preliminary dissertation, a perusal of which 
comprises a thorough course of instruction for the reader in this 
almost unknown subject. The Eev. Edmund F. Slafter, 
who edited Beamish's translation of " The Voyages of the 
Northmen to America," pays this earnest and enthusiastic 
author a just tribute when he says : " Mr. Laing's dissertation is 



38 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

a thorougli discussion of the whole subject of Northern literature 
and history, and is rendered not the less interesting by the 
frank and bold manner in which the author expresses his opinions 
on some important questions." The words in the preface are 
these : '' It is of importance to English history to have, in the 
English language, the means of judging of the social and 
intellectual state — of the institutions and literature— of a people 
who during three hundred years bore an important, and for a 
great portion of that time a predominant part, not merely in the 
wars, but in the legislation of England ; who occupied a very 
large portion of the country, and were settled in its best lands 
in such numbers as to be governed by their own, not by Anglo- 
Saxon laws ; and who undoubtedly must be the forefathers of 
as large a proportion of the present English nation as the Anglo- 
Saxons themselves, and of a much larger proportion than the 
Normans. These Northmen have not merely been the fore- 
fathers of the people, but of the institutions and character of 
the nation, to an extent not sufficiently considered by our 
liistorians. . . . They occupied one-third of all England for 
many generations, under their own Danish laws ; and for half a 
century nearly, immediately previous to the Norman Conquest, 
they held the supreme government of the country." Was the 
supremacy of these Northern people such a disgrace to England that 
the proud nation has not yet recovered from the humiliation of it, 
and cannot endure to be reminded of those times 1 Manifestly 
not. Did these Scandinavians so retard the progress of the 
nation that the people of modern England may justly hate them 
for the injury and banish them, so far as may be, from 
recollection 1 Every line of evidence refutes such an idea. 
But aside from the military prowess and warlike achievements 
of this race, which all must admit, did they have any prestige 
that entitles them to a place in English literature, in English 
history, in the grateful memory of the nation 1 In his words 
with regard to Snorre Sturleson and the subject-matter of his 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 39 

remarkable book, Laing settles tbe question as to the right of 
this race to a place in English literature and history : " He gives, 
too, every now and then, very natural touches of character, and 
scenes of human action, and of the working of the human mind, 
which are in truth highly dramatic. In rapid narrative of the 
stirring events of the wild Viking life, — of its vicissitudes, 
adventures and exploits, — in extraordinary, yet not improbable 
incidents and changes in the career of individuals, — in touches 
true to nature, — and in the admirable management of his story, 
in which episodes apparently the most unconnected with his 
subject, come in by and by at the right moment, as most 
essential parts of it, — Snorre Sturleson stands as far above Ville 
Hardouin, Joinville or Froissart, as they stand above the 
monkish chroniclers who preceded them. His true seat in the 
Valhalla of European literature is on the same bench — however 
great the distance between — on the same bench with Shakspeare, 
Carlyle, and Scott, as a dramatic historian; for his Harold 
Haarfager, his Olaf Tryggvason, his Olaf the Saint, are 
in reality great historical dramas, in which these wild, energetic 
personages, their adherents and their opponents, are presented 
working, acting and speaking before you. . . . English readers 
. . . who would never discover from the pages of Hume, or of 
any other of our historical writers, that the ITorthern pagans who, 
in the ninth and tenth centuries, ravaged the coasts of Europe, 
sparing neither age, sex nor condition — respecting neither 
churches, monasteries nor their inmates — conquering Normandy, 
Northumberland (then reckoned with East Anglia, equal to 
one-third of all England), and, under Swein and Canute the 
Great, conquering and ruling over the whole of England, — were 
a people possessing any literature at all, or any laws, institutions, 
arts, or manners connecting them with civilized life. Our 
historians have confined themselves for information entirely to 
the records and chronicles of the Anglo-Saxon monks . . . and 
who naturally represent them as the most ferocious and 



40 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

ignorant of barbarians, and without any tincture of civi- 
lization." 

There we have it ; the monks, the natural enemies of the 
Scandinavians, have become their historians, and the testimony 
of those whose whole office has been to propagate such versions 
only of facts and events and personal action as pass Church censor- 
ship, has been universally accepted. Hume does indeed imitate 
the tone of these monks, whose rage will never cool toward the 
Northmen, for he uniformly speaks of them as " those swarms 
of robbers, which the fertile North thus incessantly poured 
forth against them," " the piratical Danes," " those ravagers," 
&c., &c. ; and makes one representation as egregiously false as 
if penned under monkish dictation : " When Alfred came to 
the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance 
and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the 
government, and from the ravages of the Danes. The 
monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, 
their libraries burnt ; and thus tlie only seats of erudition in 
those ages were totally subverted." 

It will be seen further on that there was one " seat of erudi- 
tion " in the world even then, that preserved the true history 
of those times so sacredly as to place it, intact, in the hands 
of posterity, for effective use in the hour when the records so 
skilfully manipulated by ecclesiastics and religious intriguers 
would be discredited and proofs of the fraud required. This 
true history was preserved in the heart and mind of the people 
of the North, ages before it was reduced to writing, and handed 
down in oral tradition. There was also an especial class of 
men to whose keeping all annals were confided, and Laing's 
description of them, here quoted, corresponds with that of many 
other writers on the subject: "Before the introduction or 
general diffusion of writing, it is evident that a class of men 
whose sole occupation was to commit to memory and preserve 
the laws, usages, precedents and details of all those civil 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 41 

affairs and rights, and to whose fidelity in relating former trans- 
actions implicit confidence could be given, must of necessity- 
have existed in society — must have been in every locality ; and 
from the vast number and variety of details in every district, 
and the great interests of every community, must have been 
esteemed and recompensed in proportion to their importance in 
such a social state. This class were the Skalds." 

This paragraph, in itself, contradicts the following one by 
Hume : " He (Rollo) collected a body of troops, which like 
that of all those ravagers, was composed of Norwegians, 
Swedes, Frisians, Danes, and adventurers of all nations, who 
being accustomed to a roving, unsettled life, took delight in 
nothing but war and plunder." As well could one say of the 
French followers of Napoleon who accompanied him on his 
wars of conquest, that "they were accustomed to a roving, 
unsettled life." This same Rollo, or Eolf, achieved a conquest 
in France, that Napoleon himself need not have been ashamed 
of, and which perhaps conduced to make the French people 
worthy followers of the great general, who may have been 
inspired to heroic efforts by the accounts of his illustrious pre- 
decessor, William the Conqueror. Rolf left Norway for the 
same reason as did "the nobility and people of the highest 
civilization " who emigrated to Iceland, namely, to escape from 
the despotic sway of Harald Harfager, and neither he and his 
followers nor they were men to " take delight in nothing but 
war and plunder." 

On the accuracy of the old Icelandic annals must the 
thinkers and reformers of the present day rely, in their efforts 
to disentangle history from the almost hopeless confusion in 
which the aforesaid monkish chroniclers have involved it, con- 
sequently it is extremely gratifying to find such ample corrobo- 
ration of the truthfulness of the Icelandic statements. It must 
never be lost from sight that these were a free people, bound by 
neither priest nor king, and consequently not forced to extol 



42 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

the representatives of either ecclesiasticism or royalty ; they 
expressed their honest opinion in every instance. Five 
hundred years of Roman Catholic rule had destroyed all manhood 
and independence in the Anglo-Saxons; as Laing says, "the 
spirit, character and national vigour of the old Anglo-Saxon 
branch of this people, had evidently become extinct under che 
influence and pressure of Ibe Church of Rome upon the 
energies of the human mind." But the Scandinavians were 
as yet exempt ; submission and all cringing to authority was 
unknown to them ; there was no cowardice in their blood, and 
hence no propensity to lie. In tb.) introduction to his Heims- 
kringla, Snorre Sturleson, the celebrated man " to whom," as 

' Henry Wheaton declares, " his country s history and literature 
are most indebted, and whose great historical work has justly 
earned for him the title ol the Northern Herodotus," affirms 
with regard to the truthfulness of the Skalds : " For although 
it be the fashion with Scalds to praise most those in whose 
presence they are standing, yet no one would dare to relate to 
a chief wkat he and all those who heard it know to be false 
and imaginary, — not a true account of his deeds ; because that 

; would be mockery, not praise." 

"l In the twelfth century Iceland possessed considerable collec- 
tions of books, and for a long time one common language was 
spoken and written in England, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and 
Denmark. At least one-third of England was occupied by men 
from the North, the land was ruled by Northern laws, Northern 
customs and usages had been introduced.^ Why then have 
not modern English historians sought their own race, their 
own nationality, their own language, as the right sources 
of historical knowledge of England, instead of the old Latin 
legends which are the nonsensical relics of Roman rule in 
this country? To which has their allegiance been due, to 
which has it spontaneously been given, to the Roman rule 
which has left traces only of " a despotic military occupation 



OR, Honour to wik^m Honour is Due. 43 

of the country," even this soon obliterated, or to the Scandi- 
navian rule, which has made England the proud nation that it 
is 1 There was no stint of historical records in Iceland, its 
literature was as rich and varied as it was copious, the Latin 
lore (?) of the monks could in no sense be compared with it, for, 
to cite Laing, "during the five centuries in which the Northmen 
were riding over the seas, and conquering wheresoever they 
landed, the literature of the people they overcame was locked 
up in a dead language, and within the walls of monasteries. 
But the Northmen had a literature of their own, rude as it 
was ; and the Anglo-Saxon race had none, none at least belong- 
ing to the people." 

One Icelandic collection, the Arnse-Magnajan collection, 
"alone contains two thousand volumes of Icelandic and old 
Northern manuscripts. This collection was made by Arnas 
Magnussen, a distinguished antiquary, between 1702 and 1712, 
and is named in honour of him." (Vide the Earl of Ellesmere's 
" Guide to Old Northern Archaeology." London, 1848, p. 12.8.) 
Did England seek to gain possession of these treasures 1 Evi- 
dently not, for the bulk of them found their way to Den- 
marh. The Earl of Ellesmere remarks : " But it is not merely 
for the Scandinavian North properly so called, that the lan- 
guage and literature possess a national significance, which, 
throughout a certain period, extends to EiTSsia, as also to Ger- 
many and to France, . . . but doubtless in a still greater 
degree to the British Isles." True in theory, this is disproved 
in practice, for the English nation has not given the slightest 
evidence that it considers this language and literature to possess 
a national significance ; its learned men and antiquarians have 
disdained to pursue this line of research, the people, said to be 
most proud of their ancestry, have buried all recollection of the 
only ancestors of theirs of whom they had reason to be proud ; 
a land, said to be enlightened, has purposely thrown a veil of 
obscurity over its own most brilliant epochs which little Den- 



44 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

mark is obliged to lift, in order to give the world the informa- 
tion to which it is rightfully entitled and which it is hopeless 
to expect from England ! English tourists go to Norway iofish 
and to hunt, not to search fur historical links, nor to gain a 
better knowledge of their Viking ancestry ; the museums and 
fine antiquarian collections in Denmark possess as little at- 
tractions for the cultivated travelling public of England as the 
historical relics and associations of Sweden. But sixty hours 
by sea from that country, one that would naturally be sup- 
posed to possess an infinite charm for the English, what with 
its lovely scenery, its castles and manors, its Viking mounds and 
burial-places, its exhumed treasures, — a priceless illuminated 
scroll of English history as well as Swedish, — the English 
people have too little interest to go there ! In England Swedish 
literature, together with Norwegian and Danish, is excluded; 
there is a deep-seated prejudice against translations, even from 
the language derived from the one that was once their oicn 
national tongue ; Swedish authors are scarcely known even by 
name. Sweden itself is held in downright contempt ; an ex- 
pression of surprise covers the listener's face if one speaks of 
any of the excellent features of this country, or its productions 
in literature or art ; the same contempt would fall upon Norway 
but for its salmon and bears and wild mountain haunts, which 
afford to tired summer travellers a refuge from the over- 
civilization of England. Denmark is not taken into the 
account at all. With a narrow provincialism that is un- 
paralleled, England lops off its own past, the most glorious 
epochs of its antiquity, forbids the mention of its Viking 
ancestors, is deaf to all knowledge of them, and excludes the 
three nations whose early history is identical with its own from 
all fraternity or kinship ! 

So the records and annals went to Denmark ! To an 
American, the Eev. E. F. Slafter, the public is indebted for a 
graphic account of the use to which these valuable manuscripts 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 45 

were put; this is contained in his introduction to "The 
Voyages of tlae ISToi thmen to America : " " The Eoyal Society 
of Northern Antiquaries, at Copenhagen, entered upon the in- 
vestigation of the subject with enthusiasm, energy and compre- 
hensive views. Their scheme involved a much wider field than 
the visits of the Northmen to America. It comprehended a 
thorough investigation of the whole subject of Scandinavian 
history and literature. The Society proposed to publish from 
time to time such old Northern manuscripts as might be useful 
in the elucidation of history, antiquities and language. The 
field was divided into sections ; and active workers were 
appointed to each, selected with reference to their especial tastes 
and learning. The fruits of these labours were prolific ; and in 
the progress of a few years more than forty volumes were 
issued, besides gazettes and annual reports, dealing with early 
Scandinavian life, manners and customs, in their multiform 
conditions and phases. In 1837, Professor Charles Christian 
Rafn, who had been placed at the head of the section on the 
voyages to America, published, under the auspices of the 
Society, an elaborate report, in a volume entitled ' Antiquitates 
AmericanaB,' an imperial quarto of 526 pages, richly embel- 
lished with numerous illustrations and maps, comprising fac- 
siniilies of the most important parchment codices, which had 
been taken as the basis of the work. In this volume the 
treatment of the whole subject is thorough and scholarly. 
AVhile it is never safe to assume that the treatment of any 
historical question is absolutely complete and exhaustive, we 
apprehend that little or nothing more will ever be added to our 
knowledge of the voyages made to this country by the North- 
men in the tenth century." 

Pigott also communicates some information on the subject : 
"in 1594 appeared a Danisli translation of Snorre Sturleson's 
* Chronicle of the Kings of Norway,' written in the thirteenth 
century in Icelandic, Avhich threw an entirely new light on this 



46 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

hitherto obscure subject, and excited the further researches of 
the learned iu the North. One of the most ardent in this 
pursuit was Arngrim Johnsen, who died in 1648, and who by 
his writings and industry in procuring and deciphering old 
Icelandic manuscripts, obtained a great mass of information on 
the subject. Contemporary with him, and his worthy co- 
adjutor, was Bryuiulf Svendsen, Bishop of Iceland, who died in 
1675. The former discovered and sent to Olaus Wormius, in 
1628, a parchment copy of the Prose Edda, now in the 
Library of the University at Copenhagen, and scarcely ten 
years afterwards, Bryniulf discovered copies on parchment both 
of the Prose and Poetic Eddas, and sent both to the Royal 
Libiary at Copenhagen." 

Not content with assuming the whole tremendous task of 
making this buried history known, wath performing its own 
duty and England's, too, with informing the American nation 
of those facts in its own early history, long before it became a 
nation, which have alone saved it from impending ruin, from 
another "thousand years' eclipse of common- sense and reason" 
(as Oswald describes the state in Europe incident upon the 
Romanizing process), Denmark proposes to do still more, this 
largely for the benefit of England. According to what the Earl 
of Ellesmere says : '' It has been the wish of the Royal Society 
of ISTorthern Antiquaries, when its means should admit of it, to 
publish a collection, as complete as possible, of the Scandinaviaii 
sources of the early history of Great Britain and Ireland, in a 
separate work, to form a companion to the two M'orks already 
undertaken by the Society, viz. ' Antiquitates Americanae ' and 
'Antiquites Russes et Orientalcs.' . . . The importance of a 
similar collection of ' Antiquitates Britannicce et Hibernicae ' 
must be obvious. . . . When a greater degree of attention shall 
be bestowed in the British Islands on the undertakings of the 
Society and a greater degree of interest aAvakened for the matter 
iu question, it is to be expected that the Society will tliereby 
be enabled to realize >urh a plai!." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 47 

So little Denmark is even to undertake the publication of 
English history, which England is too indifferent and inert to 
publish for itself ! As another evidence of this wilful ignorance 
and disregard of a subject of such vast importance, I quote a 
significant little note in N. L. Beamish's book : " ' Illustrations 
of Northern Antiquities,' 4to, Edinburgh, 1814, a work of high 
value and great promise, but which the want of public support 
compelled the distinguished compilers and antiquaries, Jamieson 
and Weber, to discontinue." As it is necessary to heap up 
evidence on this point, so that no doubt may be left of the 
truth in the mind of any reader, I quote some more testimony 
to this sad, almost inexplicable fact of England's remissness, 
which might have cost the United States so dearly ; Mallet 
says : " The sources whence issued those torrents of people, 
which from the North overwhelmed all Europe, the principles 
which put them in motion, and gave them so much activity 
and force, these objects, so grand and interesting, have been 
but slightly and weakly treated of," Pigott says, and Pigott is 
an English writer : " It is within a comparatively recent period 
only, that the early history of the North of Europe has begun 
to attract much attention in this country. Previous to the 
publication of Mallet's ' Northern Antiquities ' all that was 
known on the subject rested chiefly on meagre notices gleaned 
from Roman writers, whose authority on this subject, from 
deficiency of sources of accurate information, was, to say the 
least, doubtful; and on the exaggerated account of the Monkish 
Chroniclers, who had too good reason not to love the people 
whom they describe<l. Hence the history of the Scandinavians 
or Northmen, as they were afterwards called, has been generally 
looked upon as a mere sanguinary chronicle of piracies, murders 
and gloomy superstitions, and but little inclination felt to 
explore a field so uninviting. To those, however, whose 
curiosity has led them to examine the copious sources of in- 
formation respecting the early religion and history of Northern 
Europe, furnished by the Edihis and by the numerous Sagas 



48 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

which exist in the libriiries of Copenhngen aud Stockhohn ; it 
cannot fail to appear a curious anomaly that, whilst the Grecian 
Mythology in all its varied details is made familiar to us from 
our childhood, we have been so long content to remain in great 
measure ignorant of the religious superstitions of our immediate 
ancestors ; superstitions inferior it may be to those of Greece in 
refinement, but scarcely so in wildness or sublimity ; which 
contributed so much to form the peculiar character that still 
distinguishes the inhabitants of Northern Europe ; which even 
yet linger in the traditions of our peasantry, and whose traces 
are enduringly marked in the names of some of our festivals, 
and especially of the days of our week." 

He says yet more ; for once on this subject any thinking and 
truth-loving person, who values what is best in the past, will 
w^ax earnest and indignant : " The mythology of the ancient 
Scandinavians, respecting which so much curious information 
has been brought to light, of late years, by the researches of 
many distinguislied writers, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, 
has hitherto excited but little attention in this country, although 
the subject is well calculated to awaken our interest, not only 
as the source of most of our popular superstitions, from whence 
the favourite authors of our early childhood and of our maturer 
age have drawn their witches, their dwarves, their giants, and 
their ghosts, but in an historical point of view also, fur a short 
retrospect will suffice to show that the religion of Odin must 
have exercised a great and lasting influence on the character 
and institutions of the inhabitants of Great Britain." 

Not from Eddas or Sagas, nor the " Heimskringla," nor the 
rich stores of information put within easy reach by zealous 
Danish antiquarians, has England drawn the scanty knowledge 
that it was constrained to put into some kind of historical 
shape. That English historians have been obliged to consult 
some authorities, reliable or unreliable, is self-evident. The 
authors I have quoted are unanimous in asserting that they 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 49 

consulted the monkish chioniclers by preference. Having had 
a heroic age, this transmitted to them by the conquering hosts 
who settled and governed England, having gained through these 
people, a race combining the most superb traits, a mythology, 
equal if not superior to the Grecian, an ancient literature of 
which any land could be proud, and which was virtually the 
only literature in Europe at that time, having had a past to 
which not only England, but other nations owe all the liberty 
they possess, the English consult the records of a class of men 
whose sole office during all the ages in question was to eradicate 
both the Grecian and Scandinavian mythologies, to blast lite- 
rature, to get the better, by fair means or foul, of the race who 
were sowing the seeds of liberty broad-cast over Europe, and 
whose sole office since that period has been to blacken the past 
in which the free-born Scandinavians figured and to so defame 
them that posterity would regard them as monsters ! 

Laing is able to say who and what some of these men were 
personally : " Oui early historians, from the venerable Bede 
downwards, however accurate in the events and dates they 
record, and however valuable for this accuracy, are undeniably 
the dullest of chroniclers. They were monks, ignorant of the 
world beyond their convent-walls, recording the death of their 
abbots, the legends of their founders, and the miracles of their 
sainted brethren, as the most important events in history ; the 
facts being stated without exercise of judgment, or inquiry after 
truth, the fictions with a dull credulity unenlivened by a single 
gleam of genius. ... It is not to be denied that all this con- 
nected series of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history, from 
the dissolution of the Eoman empire in Britain in the middle 
of the fifth century down to the middle of the thirteenth century, 
although composed by such writers of the Anglo-Saxon popula- 
tion as Bede and Matthew Paris, men the most eminent of 
their times for learning and literary attainments amongst the 
Anglo-Saxons and their descendants, is of the most unmitigated 

B 



50 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

dullness, considered as literary or intellectual production ; and 
that all the historical compositions of the old Anglo-Saxon 
branch during those eight centuries, either in England or in 
Germany, are, with few if any exceptions, of the same leaden 
character." 

These in England and France, distorting the characteristics 
of the Norsemen and Vikings, and concealing everything that 
was to their credit, and the monkish writers in Spain and Italy 
extolling Columbus a few centuries later, a man after their own 
lieart, totli sedulously hiding the fact of the Norse discovery of 
America, which the Romish Church must of necessity have 
known at the date of its accomplishment, all these conspired to 
prepare a pitfall for the future American Republic, which it will 
be barely able to escape. 

English predilections were obviously with the monks, with 
Ihe Church ; not only did the English people accept and dis- 
seminate the garbled versions of these professional falsifiers 
relative to the deeds of their own ancestors and kinsmen, but 
they joined forces with them to subdue the nations of the North 
through the only means available — that is by converting them 
to Christianity. This was their last resort, a stratagem of war of 
those deficient in genuine military qualifications, and who could 
not overcome their enemy by legitimate means. English mis- 
sionaries and priests went to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, 
and laboured indefatigably to convert the inhabitants, "It 
was from England" affirms the Earl of Ellesmere proudly, 
" that Norway received the first germ of Christianity. It was 
there that Hakon, the first Christian king of Norway, com- 
menced and finished his education, during the period from 937 
to 963, though he failed in the eifort to establish his own faith 
among his subjects. ... It was reserved for the insignificant 
islets of Scilly to kindle for Norway that light, which was 
thence to bedilfused over the remotest North. The expatriated 
Norwegian prince and sea-king, Olaf Tryggvasou, known in the 



OP, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 51 

history of England by the name of Anlaf, received baptism in 
these isles in 993." 

It is well known what atrocities Olaf Tryggvason perpetrated in 
forcing his subjects to adopt Christianity. English bishoj)s also 
converted Olaf Ericson, king of Sweden, in 1008. Wheaton has 
something significant to relate about the Hakon referred to : 
Harald H&rfager's son, Hakon, who had been educated in the 
new religion at the court of King Athelstane, took with him 
from England some Christian priests and missionaries. He 
assembled a large conclave of people, where he tried to intro- 
duce this doctrine. A rich and popular landholder rose to 
oppose it, and made a fervent protest, in which he said : " But 
now we know not what to think, that thou who didst restore 
to us our lost freedom, shouldst desire to fasten upon us a new 
and more intolerable yoke of slavery." Wlieaton gives us the 
Avhole speech, and a remarkable oratorical effort it is ! The dis- 
tinguished Swedish novelist, Victor Eydborg, in " The I^ast 
Athenian," puts into the mouth of one of his anti Christian 
characters a similar objection : " The Christians, Hermione, 
hate the high expression of art, as much as the deep seriousness 
of investigation. They talk of poverty and plunder our temples 
— of humility and trample upon our necks. . . . They are a 
pack of malefactors, intriguers, hypocrites and asses. They tear 
in pieces the world and each other in disputes on words without 
meaning ; but that in which they all agree, is what I most 
despise ; all banish the freedom of reason, all teach that the 
power of rulers and the slavery of the people is from God. 
Freedom has departed from real life, but these people deny it 
even in thought." 

The only way of depriving the formidable Northern lion of 
teeth and claws was to Christianize it. Freedom, freedom of 
life and action, freedom of thought, freedom in a vigour and 
exuberance of development never attained before, had made 
the Northern race dangerous, nay, absolutely fatal to the priest- 
E 2 



52 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

ridden, enslaved masses of southern and middle Europe, The 
mere sight or knowledge of these grovelling, craven, black- 
gowned, canting hordes, inflamed the Viking rage to frenzy, in- 
citing the utmost ferocity ; it was not honourable warfare be- 
tween equals, between men and men, but assault made by free, 
high-spirited, valiant men upon slaves, upon those whom they 
could not but consider their inferiors, and whom they deemed it 
meritorious to exterminate. The rage of the Northmen was the 
unconscious fury of nature against the destroyers of nature, the 
antipathy of health toward disease, the effort of nature to free 
itself from that which is inimical to it. With the instinct of 
self-preservation which evil has in common with good, and with 
the burning desire for temporal supremacy over the whole world 
which has ever been its animating motive, the Romish power 
devised and used the only possible means of rendering the 
jSTorthern destroyer harmless. Subdue these hosts by force of 
arms it could not. Strategy and priestly craft would avail 
where manly courage was not at command. It was not the 
good of their souls nor their eternal welfare, not the inculcation 
of divine truth that was aimed at, but the eradication of that 
principle and love of freedom that rendered all of Northern 
blood dangerous to the Church, whose sole mission was to 
compel subjection to its own baleful rule. This detestation of 
all things Scandinavian the Eomans and the Eomii-h Church 
w-ere able to instil into the English, and the two worked in 
concert to enslave the people of the North. 

And how did they accomplish it 1 In the words of Wheaton : 
"Under the impulse of this blind zeal, Olaf Tryggvason joined 
treachery to cruelty as one of the means of propagating the true 
faith." In the " Heimskringla " we are told that "Olaf Trygg- 
vason's short reign was in fact entirely devoted to the propaga- 
tion of the new faith, by means the most revolting to humanity," 
and the sagas abound in instances of the exercise of the blackest 
deeds of darkness in spreading the light of Christianity. Many 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 53 



streams of noble Northern blood went to swell the tide that 
had been shed throughout Europe, to kill that pernicious germ 
of freedom that could only be destroyed through wholesale 
slaughter. In "The History of Eationalism," Locky affirms: 
" That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than 
any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, 
will be questioned by no Protestant who has a complete know- 
ledge of history." 

Among the measures used were also such as these : " Otho 
III, of the Saxon line, concluded a peace with Harold Blaatand, 
the principal condition of which Avas that the Danish people 
should embrace Christianity, and their king should endeavour 
to introduce the new religion in Norway." Wheaton quotes 
Charles the Sim.ple's words, which so well show the disgraceful 
means employed : " My kingdom is laid waste," said the monarch 
to the prelate, "my subjects are destroyed or driven into exile; 
the fields are no longer ploughed or sown. Tell the Norman 
that I am well disposed to make a lasting peace with him, and 
that if he will become a Christian, I will give him broad lands 
and rich presents." Rolf readily consented to the proposal, as 
did many other leaders and generals to similar ones. There 
appeared to them no reason why they should not accept advan- 
tageous terms from a vanquished foe, and as for embracing 
Christianity, that seemed the idlest and emptiest of ceremonies 
to men whose religion sat so lightly upon them. To them 
belief in the gods was more a matter of poetry and ideality 
than of practical import ; it served to kindle their enthusiasm, 
perhaps their valour, although this in the main was self- fed ; 
and with a religion that had no rites or ceremonies to speak of, 
no established priesthood, that exercised no tyranny over them, 
it was a moral impossibility for them to conceive of such a 
system as the Christian Church, or to imagine to what a horrible 
thraldom they were consigning themselves and their descendants. 

However, the mistake they made, and through no fault of 



54 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

theirs either — -they were too noble, too frank, too single-minded 
to fathom the depth of perfidy in the Romish Church, in the 
religious system called Christianity — this mistake the people of 
the United States can retrieve. The spirit of the Norsemen 
has de^ctnded into Americans. They, and not the English, as 
events have proven, are the true heirs of the glorious heritage 
bequeathed by the ancient Scandinavians. The colonists, who 
revolted against English oppression, and who threw off all alle- 
giance to the Crown, were totally unaware that there was that 
in the English past that had nourished and inspired their own 
spirit of independence, that they had ancestors who had 
possessed their own distinguishing traits, and who had laboured 
manfully to make these traits the prevailing ones in English 
character, and so they cut all the links that had bound them to 
England. 

If England had revered its own free-minded ancestors, if it 
had seconded the efforts of the North to spread liberty over all 
the nations of the earth, instead of the efforts of Rome to stifle 
liberty for ever by putting all nations, the Scandinavian included, 
under the perpetual rule of the Church, the conduct of America 
since the hour it became an independent Republic would have 
been very different and the present peril would have been 
averted. Precautions could then have been taken in time 
against the continual encroachments of the Roman Catholic 
power in the United States ; the full purpose and design of 
that power would have been apparent ; Americans, in a body, 
would have realized that while they were working, with one 
heart and one soul, for the formation of an ideal Republic, in 
which the principles of liberty, of right, of equity, of justice, 
would be fully embodied, there was an insidious force in their 
midst steadily using liberty to undermine liberty, a force that 
was pledged to tyranny, evil, and the subversion of right ; whose 
record was iniquity, and whose intent was iniquity ! No 
warning came through the watchful care of the Mother country ; 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 55 

it only gave the precedent of the frequent conversion of high 
persons from among the nobility to the Eoman Catholic faith. 
No admonition was uttered by England to the less experienced 
sons and daughters of England across the water to the effect 
that " eternal vigilance was the price of safety." They were 
never told by England that they should honour their Norse 
ancestors, be true to the principles these held so dear, and 
perfect the Republic founded on a model that the Norsemen 
themselves had originated and outwrought in Iceland and 
Switzerland. The knowledge of the Norse discovery of 
America did not come to the people of the United States from 
England, but from Denmark. England took no interest in the 
matter, was indifferent as to whether it was true or false, felt 
no pride in a discovery so momentous, made by its own ancestors, 
saw no necessity of informing Americans of a fact of such vital 
importance as to prove their greatest safeguard against a deadly 
foe! 

But Denmark came to the rescue ! Denmark performed the 
whole duty that England had evaded. The tidings so fraught 
with mighty consequences to the young Republic, were seized 
with avidity by Americans, and responded to in the right spirit. 
No sooner was that great work of Professor Rafn's printed, 
than the Historical Society of Rhode Island opened corre- 
spondence with the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries in 
Copenhagen, and several translations of the Norse voyages to 
America were put within reach of American readers. The 
Prince Society, in Boston, republished the translation of these 
by N. L. Beamish, an English author, who, like Laing, Pigott, 
the Howitts, and others, exerted himself to the utmost to 
rouse the English public into some sort of action, and numerous 
American works appeared on the siibject. Gratitude was not 
wanting either to our Norse ancestors ; the appreciation so long 
deferred, the tribute refused them by their English descendants, 
was yielded gladly by their Aniciican ones ! Benjamin Lossing 



56 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

vrrotc : " It is back to the Northern Vikings we must look for 
the hardiest elements of progress in the United States." And 
B. F. De Costa : " We fable in a great measure when we speak 
of our Saxon inlieritance ; it is rather from the Northmen that 
we have derived our vital energy, our freedom of thought, and, 
in a measure that we do not yet suspect, our strength of speech." 
The accounts of the Norse voyages to America also seem to 
have met with full credence, Bancroft, the historian, forming 
tlie signal exception to the rule. Remarking this, Mr. Slafter, 
ill his introduction to the " Voyages," says : " Mr. Bancroft, in 
the earliest of his "History of the United States," treats the 
alleged Icelandic voyages to this continent as a myth, and, in 
his last, has not in any degree modified his sweeping statements 
of distrust. We are not aware that any other distinguished 
historian has reached the same conclusion." Mr. Slafter him- 
self asserts : " Both of these documents are declared, by those 
qualified to judge of the character of ancient writings, to be 
authentic, and were clearly regarded by their writers as narratives 
of historical truth." Edward Everett writes, quite as emphati- 
cally, in the North American Review: "These accounts are 
either founded on truth, or they are wholly false ; and those 
who hold to the latter opinion will, we think, find more diffi- 
culty in carrying out their hypothesis, than there is in admitting 
the substantial truth of the tradition." Ben. Franklin, Baldwin, 
Goodrich, T. W. Higgenson, J. Abbott, W. C. Bryant, and 
many other Americans have written in confirmation of the truth 
of the Norse discovery of America, as founded on the Icelandic 
narratives. 

But the duty of Americans does not end with this acknow- 
ledgment of the truth. The Roman Catholics in their midst 
and in Europe have been diligently spreading a statement in 
direct refutation of all this, the consummation of their long- 
continued policy of at once concealing the discovery of the 
Norsemen and substituting that of Columbus for it. Their 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 57 

gain, should this substitution be allowed, need not be described ; 
it is already apparent enough. The wish expressed for a general 
celebration of the discovery of America by Columbus, is the 
first wary move of the Roman Catholic Church to uproot freedom 
from American soil. It is the signal for the renewal of the old 
conflict with the Norsemen in nearly every country of Europe. 
Once the Norse discovery is thoroughly accredited, the United 
States, as a nation acting upon it, the true discoverers lionoured, 
the false one execrated as he deserves, the Church that has 
aided and abetted him execrated as it deserves, the kinship 
and sympathy of Norsemen and Americans realized and ac- 
knowledged — once this comes about, the Romish band of con- 
spirators from Pope to canting, whining priest, have their old 
enemy bodily befoie them again, only refreshed by their long 
sleep of a thousand y.,ars and eager to take up the old battle on 
soil that will not betray them as did Europe ! 

Americans are to put on the Norse armour and seal the 
glorious work for universal liberty that their ancestors have 
bequeathed to them I 



58 The Icelandic Discoverers of Amf.rk 



CHAPTER Iir. 

THE EVIDENCE THAT THE NOIISEMBN- DISCOVERED AMERICA 
IN THE TENTH CENTURY. 

As has been seen by the statement of Samuel Laing quoted in 
the first chapter, the proof that the Norsemen discovered 
America, five hundred years before Coluuibus, rests entirely on 
docum.entary evidence, and this evidence is to be found in the 
two sagas contained in the "Codex Flatoiensis." Mr. Slafter's 
statement is substantially the same, as far as the manuscripts 
are concerned : " Among the vast number of Scandinavian 
manuscripts there are two historical sagas which describe western 
voyages, undertaken during the twenty-five years that intervened 
between 985 and 101 1. One of them is known as the Saga of 
Erik the Eed and the other as that of Thorfinn Karlsefne. On 
these two documents rests all the essential evidence which we 
have relating to the voyages of the Northmen to America. 
Allusions are found in several other Scandinavian writings, 
which may corroborate and confirm the narratives of the two 
important sagas to which we have just referred, but add nothing 
to them really essential or important. The S.iga of Erik the 
Red is taken from the Codex Flateyensis, containing a number 
of sagas, which were collected and written out in their present 
form at some time between the years 1387 and 1395. Tlie 
original saga, of which this is a copy, is not known to be now in 
existence, but is conjectured, from internal evidence drawn from 
its language and style, to have been originally composed in the 
twelfth century. The saga of Thorfinn Karlsefne in its present 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 59 

form is supposed to have been written, at least a part of it, by 
Hauk Erlendson, for many years governor of Iceland, who died 
in 1334. Whether it had been committed to writing at an 
earlier period, and copied by him from a manuscript, or whether 
he took the narrative from oral tradition and reduced it himself 
to writing for the first time, is not known." In the translation 
of the voyages, a little light is thrown upon this point, for it is 
stated that "Karlsefne has accurately related to all men the 
occurrences on all these voyages, of which somewhat is now 
recited here." 

But to give Mr. Slafter's full opinion concerning their relia- 
bihty : " While there is no corroborating evi-dence outside of 
Icelandic writings themselves, no monuments in this country 
confirming the truthfulness of the narratives, they have never- 
theless all the elements of truth contained in other sagas, which 
are clearly confirmed by monumental remains. Events occurring 
in Greenland, recorded in Icelandic sagas of equal antiquity, 
are established by the undoubted testimony of ancient monu- 
ments. This, together with the fact that there is no improba- 
bility that such voyages should have been made, render it easy 
to believe that the narratives contained in the sagas are true in 
their general outlines and important features." 

The proof thus being in such a compact shape, and authentic, 
it only remains for us to see how this has been regarded by minds 
whose conclusions are of value. Among these Baron von 
Humboldt must naturally take precedence. Before presenting 
his testimony, which would have great weight, even if unsup- 
ported by that of scores of other writers, I cite Mr. Slafter's words 
about this testimony : " In treating of the discovery of America 
the author (Alex, von Humboldt) refers to the voyages of the 
Northmen to this continent as a matter of settled history. He 
does not even offer an apology, or suggest a doubt. The vast learn- 
ing, just discrimination, and sound sense of this distinguished 
scholar, give great weight to his opinions on any subject." 



6o The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

The following extract is taken from the second volume of the 
"Cosmos;" "Although the acquaintance of the nations of 
Europe with the western part of the earth is the main subject 
of our consideration in this section, and that around which the 
numerous relations of a more correct and a grander view of the 
universe are grouped, we must yet draw a strong line of separa- 
tion between the undoubted first discovery of America, in its 
northern portions, by the Northmen, and its subsequent re-dis- 
covery in its tropical regions. Whilst the Caliphate still 
flourished under the Abassides at Bagdad, and Persia was under 
the dominion of the Samanides, whose age was so favourable to 
poetry, America was discovered in the year 1000 by Leif, the 
son of Eric the Kod, by the northern route, and as far as 
41° 30' north latitude." In a foot note, the author says: 
" Parts of America were seen, although no landing was made 
on them, fourteen ;v'ear3 before Leif Eiricksson, in the voyage 
Avhich Bjarne Herjulfsson undertook from Greenland toward 
the southward in 986. Leif first saw the land at the island 
of Nantucket, 1° south of Boston; then in Nova Scotia; 
and, lastly, in I^! ewfoundland. which was subsequently called 
* Litla Helluland,' but never ' Vinland.' The gulf which 
divides Newfoundland from the mouth of the great river St. 
Lawrence, was called by the Northmen, who had settled in 
Iceland and Greenland, Markland's Gulf." (See Caroli Christian! 
Rafn Antiquitates AmericansB, 1845, pp. 4, 421, 423 and 463.) 
Baron von Humboldt thus cites the same authority, the sole and 
incontrovertible one. He continues : " The first, although acci- 
dental incitement towards this event emanated from Norway. 
Towards the close of the ninth century Naddod was driven by 
storms to Iceland whilst attempting to reach the Faroe 
Islands, which had already been visited by the Irish. The first 
settlement of the Northmen w^as made in 875 by Ingolf. Green- 
land, the eastern peninsula of a land which appears to be every- 
where separated by the sea from America proper, was early 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 6i 

seen " (quotes Eafn again), " although it was first peopled from 
Iceland a hundred years later (983). . . Notwithstanding the 
proximity of the opposite shores of Labrador {Helluland it 
mikla), 125 years elapsed from the first settlement of the North- 
men in Iceland to Leif's great discovery of America. So 
small were the means possessed by a noble, enterprising, but not 
wealthy race for furthering navigation in these remote and 
dreary regions of the earth. The littoral tracts of Vinland, so 
called by the German Tyrker from the wild grapes which were 
found there, delighted its discoverers by the frnitfiilness of the 
soil, and the mildness of its climate, when compared with Ice- 
land and Greenland. This tract, which was named by Leif the 
* Good Vinland ' (Vinland it goda), comprised the coast-line 
between Boston and New York, and consequently parts of the 
present States of Massachusetts, Khode Island, and Connecticut, 
between the parallels of latitude of Civita Vecchia and Terra- 
cina, which, however, correspond there only to mean annual 
temperatures of 47° 8' and 52° 1'. This was the prin- 
cipal settlement of the Northmen. The colonists had often 
to contend with a very warlike race of Esquimaux, who then 
extended further to the south under the name of the Skralinger. 
The first Bishop of Greenland, Eric XJpsi, an Icelander, under- 
took, in 1121, a Christian mission to Vinland; and the name of 
the colonized country has even been discovered in old national 
songs of the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands. 

" The activity and bold spirit of enterprise manifested by the 
Greenland and Icelandic adventurers are proved by the circum- 
stance that, after they had established settlements south of 
41° 30' north latitude, they erected three boimdary pillars 
on the eastern shores of Baffin's Bay, at the latitude of 72° 55', 
on one of the Woman's Islands, north-west of the present 
most northern Danish colony of XJpernavik. The Eunic 
inscriptions, which were discovered in the autumn of the year 
1824, contain, according to Eask and Finn Magnusen, the 



62 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

date 1135. From this eastern coast of Baffin's Bay, more than 
six hundred years before the bold expeditions of Parry and Ross, 
the colonists very regularly visited Lancaster Sound and a part 
of Barrow's Straits for the purpose of fishing. The locality of 
the fishing-ground is very definitely described, and Greenland 
priests from the bishopric of Gardar conducted the first voyage 
of discovery (1266). This north-western summer station was 
called Kroksfjardar Heath. Mention is even made of the drift 
wood (undoubtedly from Siberia) collected there, and of the 
abundance of whales, seals, walruses, and sea-bears." 

Baron von Humboldt has asserted that the merit of first 
recognizing the discovery of America by the N"orthmen belongs 
indisputably to Ortelius, The work in which this credit is 
given the Northmen, the " Theatrum Orbis Terrarum," is a 
superb illuminated volume, of which the translation was printed 
in London in 1606; the author's preface is dated Antwerp, 
1570. Philip II. of Spain, as we are informed by the bio- 
gra]iher, graced Ortelius with the honour and title of the king's 
cosmographer. A few words from this biography will convey 
the scope of the author's ambition and ability : " There (at 
Antwerp) he began to apply himself to benefit succedent ages, 
to write of those countries by him viewed and seen, to set out 
in charts and maps divers places both of sea and land unknown 
to former ages, to describe the tracts and coasts of the east and 
west, south and north, never spoken of nor touched by Ptolemy, 
Pliny, Strabo, Mela, or any other historiographer whatsoever." 
The paragraph in question is this : " But to me it seems more 
probable, out of the history of the two Zeni, gentlemen of 
Venice (which I have put down before the table of the South 
Sea, and before that of Scandia) that this new world many ages 
past was entered upon by some islanders of Europe, as namely 
of Greenland, Iceland, and Friesland ; being much nearer there- 
unto than the Indians, nor disjoined thence (as appears out of the 
map) by an ocean so huge and to the Indians so unnavigable." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 63 

An early printed allusion, some say the earliest, to the Norse 
discovery of America, occurs in Adam of Bremen's " Historia 
Ecclesiastica Hamburgensis et Bremensis," published at Copen- 
hagen, 1579. The passage referred to is the following, and ^[r. 
Slafter asserts that it was written long before the sagas were 
reduced to writing : "The same king" (Swein Estrithson, of 
Denmark, a nephew of Canute the Great) " has besides told us 
of the discovery of still another island in the midst of the 
ocean, which is called Yinland, because the grapes grow there 
spontaneously and give the most glorious wine, also grain, with- 
out being sowed, grows there in abundance. This is no fabulous 
representation, but is founded on the reliable communications 
of the Danes." 

Another early account, and a correct one, of the discoveries 
of the Scandinavians in the west, was given by Thormod 
Torfaeus, in his " Historia Vinlandiee Antiquse." E. H. Major, 
who has edited one edition of the letters of Columbus, gives a 
list of several other ancient authors, Vitalis, Mylius, Grotius, 
&c., who mention the Scandinavian voyages, and after giving 
quite a detailed account of them himself, says in conclusion 
that "no room is- left for disputing the main fact of the dis- 
covery." 

In the Swedish work "Nordbon under Hednatiden" (Norse- 
men during the Pagan Period), by A. E. Holmberg, there is a 
cmious bit of information : "As late as the year 1347 history 
can mention a voyage umlertaken from Greenland to Vinland. . . . 
This statement is to be found in the Skalholt annals, concluded 
in the year 1356. Finally we will, as a further proof of our 
forefathers' knowledge of America long before Columbus' time, 
mention a world's-chart that was prepared in 1300, where this 
land is to be found designated under the name Synribygd 
(southern district). It is to be found in the manuscript of the 
so-called Rynibegla, and is undoubtedly the oldest map of the 
cflobe on which the new world is indicated." 



64 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

One of the older Swedish historians, Strinnholm, contributes 
a valuable paragraph : " The whole power of the Northern 
Vikings was at that time chiefly directed to England, Ireland, 
Scotland, and other known lands. This, besides the length of 
the distance, diverted attention from the new discoveries, until 
finally with the ceasing of the Viking expeditions, all knowledge 
of the strange unknown land died out, so that only saga has 
preserved the recollection of it. But a vague report of the 
Norsemen's voyages of discovery penetrated to the Norsemen in 
France, and through them and their connection with Italy pro- 
bably also came to the great Italian seaports, and accidentally 
conduced to awaken and sustain a supposition of unknown lands 
lying far in the west. So much is certain, however, that the 
northerly portion of the new part of the world that some 
centuries afterwards was found by Columbus, had already, 
toward the close of the tenth century, been discovered by the 
Scandinavian Vikings, and, as it appears, occupied by a lot of 
Scandinavian settlers as late as the twelfth century." 

The words of the celebrated Swedish historian, E. G. Geijer, 
must not be omitted in this connection ; they are from the great 
work " Svea rikes hafder " (The Annals of the Kingdom of 
Sweden) : " Viking expeditions, and, as these sopn ceased, still 
more commerce, desire of knowledge, war and court service led 
them far around, and became to them the means of at once 
acquiring Avealth and glory ; although neither royal favour, gifts, 
or any of the incentives and comforts other countries offered, 
could hinder them from finally returning to the rocky dales of 
their native land. But about one hundred years after the 
arrival of the first settlers on the island, others went over from 
there to Groeidand, and established settlements both on its east 
and west coasts. The}'- afterwards found, south of Greenland, 
other coasts, at first full of bare cliffs, farther down more flat 
and low, finally a good land on a sound, with an island in the 
north. There the streams were rich in salmon, a kind of grain 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 65 

grew Avild, and fruit tliat resembled grapes, wherefore the first 
discoverer called the land Vinlcmd det Goda. Those who after 
him sought it, also encountered natives, who bartered furs from 
them. N"o permanent connection arose for the rest with this 
land, which, however, was visited by a Greenland bishop in the 
year 1121 ; but without doubt it is some part of the coast of 
ITorth America which appears in these old Icelandic narratives, 
five hundred years before Columbus." 

All Scandinavian authors on this subject have naturally 
availed themselves of " the rolls and masses of parchments in 
the great public and private libraries of Copenhagen and 
Stockholm." Sometime the modern Scandinavians and the 
English-speaking race, on both sides of the Atlantic, will realize 
what a detriment this lingual barrier, which has separated 
nations essentially one and who once possessed a common 
tongue, has been to them. 

Thomas Carlyle does not say much about the discovery, but 
it is to the point : " Towards the end of this Hakon's (Hakon 
Jarl) reign it was that the discovery of America took place 
(985). Actual discovery, it appears, by Eric the Red, an Ice- 
lander ; concerning which there has been abundant investigation 
and discussion in our time." 

The next reigning king in Norway, it will be seen, took a 
particular interest in the new colony in Greenland, " Some 
years afterwards (after colonizing Greenland) Leif, the son of 
Eric the Red, went to Norway, where he was favourably 
received by the reigning king, Olaf Tryggveson, to whom he 
described the country in such favourable terms that Olaf 
determined to sustain the new colony. Having been himself 
recently converted to Christianity, the king was filled with great 
zeal for the propagation of the faith. He persuaded Leif to be 
baptized, and sent him back to Greenland accompanied with a 
missionary, by whose efi'orts his father Eric and the other 
colonists were converted." This occurs in Wheaton's " History 

p 



66 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

of the Northmen," and suffices to show how soon both royal 
and ecclesiastical recognition of tlie existence of a colony in 
Greenland followed npon the establishing of the colony. The 
same is true of Vinland. As many of the Greeks and Romans, 
Pythias of Marseilles, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, Procopius, knew 
of Scandinavia, all Scandinavian events were likely to be carried 
by lively rumour to the south of Europe, and as Tacitus, the 
great Roman historian, had already represented the Sviones 
(Swedes) as "a rich and powerful maritime nation," the people 
of Southern Europe were prepared to hear of any great naval 
achievement on their part, whether of conquest or discovery, 
and must have been constantly on the qui-vive. 

Snorre Sturlesou was another early ^vrite^ who, soon after 
Adam of Bremen, corroborated the testimony of the Sagas 
relative to the Icelandic voyages to America. As the former 
was a very prominent man and the latter a canon of Bremen, 
both of these works must have been known in Rome. 

As a matter of course, the Howitts confirm the discovery in 
their "History and Romance of Northern Europe:" "But 
Europe did not set bounds to their voyages and enterprises. In 
861 they discovered Iceland, and soon after peopled it. Thence 
they stretched still farther west, and discovered Greenland, to 
which they originally gave the name of Gunbjornskjir, from 
Gunbjorn, the discoverer. Spite of its wretched climate they 
colonized it, and proceeding still southward, they struck upon 
the coast of North America, as it would appear, about the State 
of Massachusetts. This was towards the end of the tenth 
century, that is, five hundred years before Columbus reached 
that country." 

Grenville Pigott's testimony corresponds with the rest : " The 
Norwegians and their descendants discovered and made settle- 
ments in Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys, and, as has been 
maintained with great semblance of truth, even in America 
itself." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 6f 

The American author, Aaron Goodrich, seems to be impatient 
of any further discussion on the point, regarding it as altogether 
superfluous, for he says : " The general reader has been con- 
vinced of the fact, which is now no longer disputed, that the 
Northmen were the first modern discoverers of this continent ;" 
while Toulmin Smith is indignant that the claim of Columbus 
should ever have been considered at all, declaring : " He was 
not the discoverer of America m any sense of the term ; he did 
not explore the American continent." Referring to Torfoeus, 
this author says that he, Torfoeus, derived his information 
from the original authentic sources, and that " the parch- 
ment manuscripts that contain them are, at this moment, in a 
state of high preservation." This fact is again made known by 
Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson, in his " America not discovered by 
Columbus," whose very title is an indignant denial of the claim 
of the Italian adventurer; he, too, says: "The manuscripts in 
which we have the Sagas relating to America are found in the 
celebrated ' Codex Flatoiensis,' a skin-book that was finished 
in the year 1387. This work, written with great care, and 
executed in the highest style of art, is now preserved in its 
integrity in the archives of Copenhagen, and a carefully printed 
copy of it is to be found in Mimer's Library at the University 
of Wisconsin." This information is of the greatest importance, 
for it may be necessary further on, should the advocates of 
Columbus's claim attempt to force an acknowledgment of it from 
the people of the United States, for this book to be produced, 
as irrefragable testimony to the fact of the Norse discovery of 
America. All translations, reprints, abstracts, may be doubted 
by the hypercritical, by the class, far too large, who are 
credulous where they should not believe, and sceptical where 
they should — there is always more faith than reason in the 
Christian world — hut the original document cannot he douhfed. 

Washington Irving, it appears, did not investigate the sub- 
ject; if he had done this before commencing his "Life of 
F 2 



68 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

Columbus," this work would probably not have been written ; 
to have investigated it afterwards would have exposed him to 
very uncomfortable feelings, and he was far from foreseeing that 
the admission of the Columbian discovery would be fraught 
with unmixed evil for the American people. He is candid 
enough, however, to confess that he did not look into the 
matter: "There is no great improbability, however, that such 
enterprising and roving voyagers as the Scandinavians may have 
wandered to the northern shores of America, &c., and if the 
Icelandic manuscripts, said to be of the thirteenth century, can 
be relied upon as genuine, free from modern interpolation and 
correctly quoted, they would appear to prove the fact." 

It is thought that the lands discovered by Bjarni Herjulfson, 
the actual first discoverer, gathered from the details and minute 
description of the voyages, were Connecticut, Long Island, 
Ehode Island, Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. 
" It may, perhaps, be urged in disparagement of these dis- 
coveries," writes Beamish, *' that they were accidental, that 
Bjami Herjulfson set out in search of Greenland and fell in 
with the eastern coast of North America, but so it was also with 
Columbus. The sanguine and skilful Genoese navigator set 
sail in quest of Asia and discovered the West Indies ; even 
when in his last voyage he did reach the eastern shore of 
Central America, he still believed it to be Asia, and continued 
under that impression till the day of his death." Washington 
Irving dwells much upon this curious misconception of Columbus, 
and the bewilderment and confusion evinced in the " skilful 
navigator's " own letters is amusing in the extreme. 

Another American author, Arthur Gilman, gives expression 
to a common objection urged by unthinking people against the 
Norse discovery, namely, that it led to nothing, produced no 
results. Unfortunately, he is not trying to combat this view ; 
he only presents it as his o^vn : " We have nothing to do here 
with the expeditions of the Northmen, who are said to have 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 69 

visited America in the eleventh century, for admitting that the 
records found in the Sagas are true statements of historic facts, 
their visits did not lead to settlements of lasting importance. To 
Columbus belongs the undivided honour of first making real the 
grand idea of the Western World. His discovery led to all that 
has since been achieved on our continent. . . . The legends of 
the Northmen, whom the Sagas tell us came to these shores 
five hundred years before Columbus, belong rather to the domain 
of the antiquary or the poet than to that of the historian." 

To render this assertion Irue, that " their visits did not lead 
to settlements of lasting importance," it is necessary to blot out 
of the past the written statements of Adam of Bremen, of 
Snorre Sturleson, and of Ion Thordarson, who wrote the Sagas 
of Eric the Red and of Thorfinn Karlscfne, in the " Codex 
Flatoiensis ;" the fact that the rumours of these vast discoveries 
in the West reached every seaport in southern Europe, as well as 
the Eternal City ; the fact that Gudrid, the wife of Karlsefne, 
visited Rome after her three years' sojourn in Vinland ; the fact 
that she narrated these experiences at length to the holy fathers ; 
the fact that Rome had appointed bishops to both Greenland 
and Vinland •) the fact that Columbus, an Italian by biith, and 
naturally aware of all these important events, went to Iceland, 
in order to pursue the investigations to which all this had given 
him the clue. After his visit to Iceland he made out to find 
America, as any one else could have found it, after obtaining 
definite directions. That there was an interval of five hundred 
years betAveen the first colonization and the subsequent one does 
not alter the fact that the first one led to the last, was the 
direct cause of it, and that this was brought about by a close 
and unbroken sequence of events, every link of which is pre- 
served, that posterity may demonstrate just what grand results 
have ensued from the discovery and intelligent explorations of 
the Norsemen, and the full accounts that they recorded of these 
achievements in Iceland. 



70 The Tcet-andtc Dtccove'!ER.s of A?t'rtc\ ; 



CHAPTER ly. 

ROMAN CATHOLIC COGNIZANCE OF THE FACT AT THE TIME OP 
THE NORSE DISCOVERY. 

It will not be difficult to prove that the wise-heads iu the 
Eternal City were aware, almost as soon as the Icelanders them- 
selves, that some of the adventurous sons of that race had 
pvished their explorations clear to remote lands across the ocean, 
and founded colonies there ; it would be far more difficult to 
prove that they did not know it. Fear, envy, hatred, a deep- 
seated animosity, made them observant of every move of the 
N^orsemen ; these were the only obstacle to the sacerdotal plan 
of universal sovereignty, of the subjection of all mankind to 
the rule of the Cross, all Europe was Christianized with the 
exception of the pagan North ; the circle was gradually narrow- 
ing around these, and escape from the Papal decree and 
dominion was impossible. Any discovery made by the Norse- 
men of new lands, in whatever quarter of the globe, meant the 
establishing of a new stronghold of paganism, if this discovery 
should be made unbeknown to Rome. It does not require any 
knowledge of Jesuitical operations, or of the history of the 
Inquisition, or of heretic-hunts in general, to show one how 
skilful the Roman Catholic mind is in ferreting out things, 
what a meddlesome, prying, inquisitive, impertinent, well- 
trained spy it is, and how quick it is to scent out possible 
mischief for the Church. 

Olaf Tryggveson had already been drawn into the fold of 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 71 

tliis Church, thanks to English zeal, when Eric the Red dis- 
covered Greenland j consequently when Leif went to Norway 
with full reports of the new colony and its flourishing condition. 
King Olaf promptly made up his mind, doubtless with the 
entire concordance of the Pope, to sustain the colony and — 
establish Christianity there. An extract^ from i^e original 
narrative in the " Heimskringla " best describes this : " The 
same winter, 999 — 1000, was Leif, the son of Eric the Red, 
with King Olaf, in good repute, and embraced Christianity. 
But the summer that Gissur went to Iceland, (King Olaf sent 
Leif to Greenland, in order to make known Christianity there ;J) 
he sailed the same summer to Greenland. He found, in the 
sea, some people on a wreck, and helped them ; the same time 
discovered he Vinland the Good, and came in harvest to 
Greenland, He had with him a priest, and other clerks, 
and went to dwell at Brattahlid with Eric, his father. Men 
called him afterwards Leif the Lucky ; but Eric, his father, 
said that these two things went one against the other, inasmuch 
as Leif had saved the crew of the ship, but brought evil men 
to Greenland, namely the priests." In another version, from 
the history of Olaf Tryggveson, is added : " But still after the 
counsel and instigation of Leif, was Eric baptized, and all the 
people in Greenland." The domestic economy of the Church 
of Rome was not such that there could have been a new dis- 
covery, a colony formed, and a wholesale conversion of the 
settlers without the Pope and his whole establishment knowing 
of it, still less when the " N'orthern barbarians " had made the 
discovery, formed the colony, and been converted to the true 
faith. This was occasion enough for a public thanksgiving 
and when this successful proselyting had been due to a power- 
ful monarch, fired with a holy zeal, and who did not stick at 
trifles nor call anything a crime that was done in the name of 
religion, this felicitous conjunction of events was not a thing 
to pass unnoticed. 



72 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

The reader will remember the little statement by Baron von 
Humboldt that " the first Bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, an 
Icelander, undertook, in 1121, a Christian mission to Vinland." 
Samuel Laing gives details of the spiritual supervision over 
Greenland, a supervision scarcely conij)atible with complete 
Papal ignorance of the existence of a colony there : " The 
discovery of Greenland by the Icelanders about the year 981, 
and the establishment of considerable colonies on one or on both 
sides of that vast peninsula which terminates at Cape Fare- 
well, — in which Christianity and Christian establishments, 
parishes, churches, and even monasteries were flourishing, or at 
at least existing to such an extent that from 1124 to 1387 
there was a regular succession of bishops, of whom seventeen 
are named, for their superintendence, — are facts which no 
longer admit of any reasonable doubt. The documentary 
evidence of the Sagas, — which gave not merely vague accounts 
of such a discovery and settlement, but statistical details, Avith 
the names and the distances from each other of farms or town- 
ships, of which there were, according to accounts of the four- 
teenth century, ninety in what was called Vestribygd or the 
Avestern settlement, Avith four churches, and one hundred and 
ninety in the Eystribygd or eastern settlement, Avith one 
cathedral, eleven other churches, tAvo toAvns, and three or four 
monasteries, — bears all the internal evidence of truth, in the 
consistency and simplicity of the statements." 

Strinnholm gives a full description of the settlements in 
Greenland, of which the abstract is that an Iceland man, Eric 
Eode, the father of the Leif Ericsson who discovered America, 
discovered Greenland, and returned in 985 Avith five-and-twenty 
ships. After that the emigration to this land increased every 
year. Within a short time large tracts of the country, both 
in the east and west, Avere peopled and settled by Icelandic 
or Scandinavian settlers. The land's nature and situation 
divided them into tAvo main colonies, which were called Oster 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 73 

and Tester hyggden. Between them lay a desert, several days' 
journey long. The chief colony was in Osterbyggden, which 
always remained the most populous and flourishing. In Vester- 
byggden there were ninety villages or hamlets, with four or 
five churches, and in Osterbyggden the number of settlements 
went up to one hundred and ninety, and the churches to twelve, 
and there were also several cloisters for nuns and monks. The 
Greenland colony flourished for four hundred years. 

Laing gives another important item : " A brief of Pope 
Nicholas V. in 1448, to the Bishops of Skalholt and Holum in 
Iceland, states that his beloved children dwelling in an island 
called Greenland, on the utmost verge of the ocean north of 
Norway, and who are under the Archbishop of Drontheim, 
have raised his compassion by their complaint that after having 
been Christians for six hundred years, and converted by the 
holy Saint Olaf, and having erected many sacred buildings and 
a splendid cathedral on said island, in which divine service was 
diligently performed, they had thirty years ago been attacked 
by the heathens of the neighbouring coast, who came with a 
fleet against them, and killed and dispersed many, and made 
slaves of those who were able-bodied ; but having now 
gathered together again, they crave the services of priests and 
a bishop." 

There was, in short, a regular succession of bishops in 
Greenland for two hundred and fifty years. We have already 
seen that mention is made of a voyage from Greenland to Yin- 
land as late as the year 1347. The next link in this most 
remarkable chain of events is the voyage of Gudrid, Karl- 
sefne's wife, from Vinland to Rome, via Iceland. Her visit to 
the lioly fathers is described by the French author, Gabriel 
Gravier, in his work " Decouverte de I'Amerique par les 
Normands : " " Quand elle eut marie Snorre, Gudrida fit un 
pelerinage a Rome. Elle fut bien re9ue et raconta certaine- 
ment ses voyages dans les contrces ultra oceaniques. Rome 



74 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

etait tres attentive aux dcconvertes geographi(|ues, coUectiounait 
avec soin les cartes et les recits qui lui parvenaient. Toute 
decouverte semblait un agrandissement du domaine papal, un 
cliamp noiiveau pour la predication evangelique. De ce qu'ils 
n'ont laisse dans I'histoire ecrite aucune trace appreciable, les 
recits de Gudrida n'en exercerent pas moins sans doute une 
ccrtaine influence sur les decouvertes posterieures." 

Thus the part that a woman plays in bringing about the 
plagiaristic discovery of America is a very important one, and 
Gudrid, Karlsefne's high-born and intelligent wife, was only 
excusable in that she did not realize what she was doing, nor 
the momentous consequences of her act, when she carried such 
valuable tidings to Eome ! The Sagas relate that she went 
there, so there can be no doubt on that point. In the 
"Voyages," as translated by Beamish, it is stated thus: "But 
when Snorre was married, then went Gudrid abroad, and 
travelled southwards, and came back again to the house of 
Snorre, her son, and then had he caused a church to be built at 
GlauuibEe ;" and in the synopsis of the historical evidence, by 
Professor Rafn, it is stated still more explicitly : " His son, 
Snorre, who had been born in America, was his successor on 
this estate. When the latter married, his mother made a 
pilgrimage to Rome, and afterwards returned to her son's house 
at Glaumbffi, where he had in the meantime ordered a church to 
be built. The mother lived long as a religious recluse." 
Gudrid is spoken of in the narratives as " a grave and dignified 
woman, and therewith sensible, and knew well how to carry 
herself among strangers." As the widow of a highly-distin- 
guished man, for Thorfinn Karlsefne was " a wealthy and 
powerful Icelandic merchant, descended from an illustrious line 
of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Irish, and Scottish ancestors, 
some of whom were kings, or of royal blood," Gudrid was one 
to carry much influence and must have been listened to in Rome 
with the most profound attention. Her wealth also conduced to 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 75 

increase the respect with which she was treated by a set of 
people who have always shown the nicest discrimination in this 
regard, and when she afterwards became a nun, the Church 
reaped a double advantage from her sojourn in Vinland. 
Gudrid had encouraged her husband to colonize Vinland, having 
always felt the deepest interest in the new country, of which so 
much was said in Greenland, and with the full prerogative of a 
Northern woman, a woman there being regarded as her hus- 
band's equal, took an active part in the management of affairs 
and was consulted on every point, consequently she was well 
versed in all pertaining to Vinland and able to give very accurate 
information, embracing all possible topographical and geo- 
graphical details. Exploring expeditions were of frequent 
occurrence during the three years the colonists stayed in Vinland. 
By a singular coincidence Karlsefne himself, as stated iu the 
" Voyages," narrated originally the events that occurred on 
these voyages, this in Iceland, and his wife narrated her 
experiences — in Rome; his narrative, when committed to 
writing, destined, eight hundred years afterwards, to save the 
land he attempted to colonize from the disastrous effects of his 
wife's indiscretion in leading the covetous gaze of the Church 
to a laud so rich in promise and which might become its future 
empire.'*' 

The famous geographer, Malte-Brun, states, in his " Histoire 
de la Geographie," that Columbus, when in Ital}^, had heard of 
the Norse discoveries beyond Iceland, for Rome was then the 
world's centre, and all information of importance was sent 
there. It was this some ages before, nay, it was more than 
this, it was a great whispering-gallery, in which not a word or 
sound, uttered in any part of the world, that was important for 
the Church to know, was lost. 

Besides the religious means of communication there was the 
commercial ; the Scandinavians carried on an enormous com- 
merce and their peaceful trading- vessels as well as war-dragons 



76 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

ranged the seas. All authors note this with wonder and 
admiration. To cite Pigott : "It woidd not be difficult to show 
that the Scandinaviaiis, from the eighth to the eleventh 
century, carried on a more active commerce, and could boast 
a more constant and extensive communication with distant 
countries, than any other nation of Europe. During the greater 
part of this period, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark Avere the 
only European nations which had any regular commerce with 
the East." Despising secrecy, and having no motive for it, 
whatever they did was known to the world ; loving fame and 
glory, seeking these as the highest earthly good, they increased 
their own celebrity by every means in their power, and each 
man in his endeavour was aided by the rest of his compatriots, 
the national pride among them being so great as to destroy 
all envy, the besetting sin of Christian communities from that 
day to this. The greatness of each individual conduced to 
the greatness of his country, and no attempt was made to 
suppress it. 

The Church of Rome knew, knew all that they had accom- 
plished, and every detail concerning the discovery and coloni- 
zation of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland 1 "What use did it 
make of this knowledge ] 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. jj 



CHAPTER V. 

ALL THE MOTIVES FOR THE CONCEALMENT AND FRAUD. 

Yes, what use did the Church of Rome make of this knowledge 
of the discovery of Greenland and Vinland % In the first place 
it concealed it. As far as is known no writer of southern or 
middle Europe seems to have made an historical record of the 
great discovery by the Norsemen except Adam of Bremen, until 
Snorre Sturleson's " Chronicle of the Kings of Norway " was 
written, in the thirteenth century, and the two important Sagas 
relating exclusively to this discovery, contained in the " Codex 
Elatoiensis," in the fourteenth. Ortelius accorded to them the 
merit of this discovery in 1570, Mylius in 1611, Grotius in 
1642, Divcono in 1643, Montanus in 1G71, Torfoeus in 1705. 
"We know that Adam of Bremen received his information from 
King Swein of Denmark, and had very strong Northern sym- 
pathies, writing very favourably of the institutions and charac- 
teiistics of the people, especially of th^ inhabitants of Sweden ; 
Torfoeus based his assertions entirely on the authentic sources 
in Iceland, and it is presumable that the other early authors 
mentioned did the same. It is obvious that they wrote with a 
certain boldness and proclaimed a theory with regard to the 
discovery of the New World that was new as yet to their con- 
temporaries. It was thus essentially the historians of the North 
who recorded and proclaimed the great achievement, concerning 
which the monkish chroniclers were ominously silent. 

And who wrote on Scandinavian mythology or gave to the 



78 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

world any information concerning the religion of Odin, the 
manners and customs of the people who had a heroic age while 
the rest of Europe was steeped in slavery and cowardly sub- 
jection, and an antiquity as worthy of being called classic as 
that of Greece itself ? ' Suhm, Nyerup, Schoning, Grundtvig, 
Thorlacius, Rafn, Finn IMagnusen, P. E. Midler, Grater, 
Abrahamsen, and others. Tliorlaoius and Finn Magnupen are 
descendants of Thorfinn Karlsefne, as are also Snorre Sturleson 
and the famous sculptor, Thorwaldsen; Eafn is a Dane, and 
there are evidently no Spaniards or Italians in this list. 
Southern writers, it is plain, held the ^Northern mythology in as 
little esteem as the Grecian ; both were pagan, and paganism 
was to be obliterated from both literature and life. We are 
told by all writers on this subject, with one voice, that " the 
zealous promoters of Christianity omitted nothing to destroy 
all relics of the ancient superstition." The resemblance of the 
Northern mythology to the Grecian was sufficient in itself to 
kindle Roman Catholic aversion to it, and when it produced a 
similar type of man, the rage and malice of the morally- 
deformed race knew no bounds. Could not Rolf, the Normau 
invader, have stood as the model of an old Greek hero 1 It is 
said that " he was mild and gentle toward the poor and 
oppressed ; stern and terrible toward his enemies ; but toward 
his friends faithful and so generous, that he for them spared 

1 According to Pigott : " Until the latter end of the sixteenth century, 
nil knowledge of the religion of heathen Scandinavia, possessed by other 
nations, was confined to what could be gleaned from the works of Paulus 
Diaconus, Adam of Bremen, and Saxo Grammaticus. The first was a 
Lombard of the latter cud of the eighth century ; the second a Canon of 
Bremen, who wrote in the eleventh ; and the last the secretary of Bishop 
Absalom in the twelfth, more celebrated for the elegance of his Latin and 
for his classical attainments than for historical correctness, and whose 
information respecting the Northern mythology is obscured and disfigured 
by his practice of decorating its deities with the inappropriate names of 
the gods of Rome." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 79 

neither gold nor other valuables ; wherefore there were 
assembled with him the most illustrious warriors of the whole 
^North, and all the neighbouring kings were subordinate to 
him." And Orvar Odd also, of whom it is related that "he 
believed neither in Odin, Thor, or any other divinity, but only 
in his own strength and good-fortune, which is said to have 
been so great, that if he only hoisted sail, he had favourable 
winds wherever he went." The lec'irned Swede, Olaf Rudbeck, 
in his famous work, the "Atlantica," published in 1702, could, 
without charge of being fantastical or absurd, demonstrate 
gravely that Sweden was Plato's lost Atlantis. According to 
the modern Swedish author, August Strindberg, "in the year 
1830 Geijer, in the perusal of Homer, comes upon the same 
idea, or the striking resemblance between ' the customs of the 
heroic age with the Greeks and Scandinavians.' In his treatise 
of the same name he shows that which is common in the 
people's thought and way of life, in laws, institutions, and. 
habits, so that the reader is astonished that he has not before 
come to the thought himself ; but Geijer draws no conclusions 
from it." We know, too, from history that the Norsemen were 
great favourites in Greece, the only country in Europe that 
welcomed them, with the exception of Eussia, whose people 
invited the Swedes to come and rule over them, and that they 
were the chosen body-guard of the Greek emperors. 

In every respect the ancient Scandinavians were the moral 
antitheses of the Eomans or Roman Catholics ; and it is no 
stretch of reason to say that they were the moral antidote of 
the Southern poison, a fierce remedy used by Nature against the 
spread of the evil, and yet, as events proved, ineffectual after all 
against a malaria that had to run its time and can only be killed 
in our own day by the aid of the very element, the Norse one, 
first employed against it. The Scandinavians were brave ; fear 
was as unknown to them as courage to the Roman Catholics : 
accordingly we find on the one hand absolute fearlessness and 



8o The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

independence, on the other absolute servility. Mallet delineates 
this striking trait of the Norse character most admirably : 
"Thus strongly moulded by the hand of nature, and rendered 
hardy by education, the opinion they entertained of their own 
courage and strength must have given the peculiar turn to their 
character. A man who thinks he has nothing to fear, cannot 
endure any sort of constraint ; much less will he submit to any 
arbitrary authority, which hfe sees only supported by human 
power, or such as he can brave with impunity. As he thinks 
himself not obliged to court any one's favour or deprecate his 
resentment, he scorns dissimulation, artifice, or falsehood. He 
regards these faults, the effects of fear, as the most degrading 
of all others. He is always ready to repel force by force ; hence 
he is neither suspicious nor distrustful. A declared enemy to 
his enemy, he attacks openly ; he confides in, and is true to 
others ; generous, and sometimes in the highest degree magnani- 
mous, because he places his dearest interest in the idea he 
entertains and would excite of his courage." 

Fear brings so many other vices in its train, that when it is 
declared that the Norsemen were utterly devoid of fear, one 
can infer that they were not superstitious or idolatrous, not 
false, not tolerant of evil, not sophistical in their way of rea- 
soning nor given to the suppression of their convictions, the 
reverse of which is shockingly true of the Roman Catholics. 
Not to dwell now on the numerous points of difference, each of 
which fired their hostility toward each other, it is only necessary 
to mention in this connection the Norsemen's belief in love 
between the sexes and deep reverence for it, a belief that the 
Christian religion immediately expunged from its ethics. Max 
Nordau defines this in particularly keen language : " The 
Christian morale does not acknowledge that love is legitimate ; 
therefore there is not either, in the institutions that are pene- 
trated by the former, any place left for love. Marriage is now 
such an institution, its character has betrayed the influence of 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 8i 

the Christian morale. According to the theological compre- 
hension, marriage has also nothing to do with man's love for 
woman. If people marry, it is to perform a sacrament, not to 
helong to each other in love. It would certainly be more 
agreeable to God if one did not marry at all." Among the 
Northern race, on the other hand, romance, constancy, devoted 
love, and chivalrous attachment to the sex so highly honoured, 
were the atmosphere of their lives. The power of the men was 
doubled by the fact that the women were always with them in 
love, sharing their ambition, stimulating them to fresh deeds of 
glory ; Avhile in the South, women were either shut up in the 
convents, debauched, or turned into zeros by the thraldom of 
the mediaeval marriage, in which women were only to bear 
children and bless God. " In paganism," to cite a noble para- 
graph from Strindberg's "Swedish People," "woman seems 
almost to have been man's equal. . . . Woman was treated by 
man with such respect and acted with such self-feeling and 
freedom, that any such thing in our enlightened times would 
be considered unheard of." To indicate another respect in 
which the method of operation in the life of the JTorsemen was 
the opposite of that of his natural foe, these worked to bring 
about material prosperity, not for a favoured class, but for all 
the other race worked for pauperism. " In union with com- 
merce," writes A. E. Holmberg, " these celebrated sea-voyages 
brought here a perfectly incredible wealth, of which it was not 
possible for us to be deprived during the Christian middle 
ages, through the plundering system directed against us in all 
respects." ^ The great Swedish king, Gustaf Vasa, had a three- 
fold task : to free his land from the Danish yoke, to free it 

• " It may be fairly concluded," writes Pigott, " that a people possessing 
so many sources of wealth, and with such continual communication with 
the most civilized portions of the world, could not have been so darkly 
barbarous as the well-grounded detestation of the monkish chroniclers has 
represented them." 

6 



82 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

from the jurisdiction of the Pope and from tlie deep poverty 
into whicli five centuries of priest- rule and medisevalism 
had sunk it. The well-known ti-aveller, Horace Marryat, in 
his " One Year in Sweden," affirms that poverty was unknown 
in Sweden until the introduction of Cliristianity there. 3 

But with all the difference in disposition, character, moral 
status, the pagan Norsemen and the Eoman Catholics had the 
same visible aim — the conquest of the world. This made them 
rivals. One desired to obtain dominion to the end of freedom, 
the other to the end of slavery. Where the former succeeded, 
they established free institutions, good laws, physical and mental 
well-being, changing by a rapid metamorphosis, once the monkish 
hordes were subdued, into benign and able statesmen ; where 
the latter succeeded, they founded cathedrals and monasteries, 
destroying all law but that of the Church. The scope of their 
ambition was equal, the motives of it utterly dissimilar. 

No wonder then that Hastings was one of the most detested 
of the Northern leaders ! Hated in France, perhaps, as is alleged, 
" on account of the extent and cruelty of his ravages," but hated 
still more because of the extent of his ambition, which had made 
the conquest of Eome its cherished aim. In Wheaton's words : 
" Hastings proposed to the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok and his 
other followers an expedition against Rome, of whose wealth 
and splendour they had heard much, without knowing precisely 
in what part of Italy the capital of the Christian world was 
situate." Holmberg's "Norsemen during the Pagan Period" 

3 As an illustration of the extent to which Christianity has developed 
'-overty I quote the following paragrnph from Felix Oswald's " Secret of 
the East :" " We do not think it necessary to alleviate the distress of tlie 
poor till it reaches a degree that threatens to end it. We have countless 
benevolent institutions for the prevention of outright death, not one bene- 
volent enough to make life worth living. Infanticide is now far more 
rigorously punished than in old times. We enforce every child's right to 
live and become a humble, tithe-paying Christian ; but as for its claim to 
live happy, we refer it to the sweet by-and-by." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 83 

contains an interesting passage relative to this ; after citing one 
of the ancient poets of France quoted by Cronholm in liis 
" K'orsemen in Vester-viking," lie says : " The remarkable part 
of it is that these high thoughts are put in Hastings' mouth by 
a liostile writer, who lets the terrible Hastings, the most dreaded 
leader of the Norse expeditions of the ninth century, chant o 
glory as the highest aim for which he had striven, and that for 
this hundreds of thousands had fallen under his sword. But 
there still remained a higher aim, for the winning of which he 
encouraged his warriors — namely, to let all the kingdoms of the 
world, which lay open to them, behold their glory, and when 
they placed the crown of Kome on lijorn Jernsida's head, their 
praise with his should resound around the whole circumference 
of the earth." When this man was converttMl it was indeed an 
occasion for rejoicing among all Komanists ; as Wheaton says, 
"this was an object of the highest interest to the people, who 
had been so long terrified and distressed by his incursions." 
This same author, who has a clear perception of the nature of 
the animosity between the two opposing forces of Europe in 
those ages, analyzes it still further by saying that after the 
cruelties practised by Charlemagne, "the great struggle between 
the North and the South assumed the character of a religious 
as well as national war, and the enmity of the Scandinavian 
invaders to the nations tliey had plundered and vanquished 
could only be appeased by their own conversion to Christianity, 
which finally put a period to their predatory incursions." The 
truth of this also appears in some words of William and Mary 
Howitt's : " War and plunder, therefore, in their eyes, so far 
from being in any degree criminal, were acts of glory and of merit. 
When we read of the bloody Danes, who were, in fact, just as 
often Swedes or Norwegians, we should remember this, and more- 
over that they cherished a particular hatred to Eome and to the 
Christian religion, because it came to them from Eome with 
all its monks and, what appeared to them, effeminate doctrines." 



84 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that the Chris- 
tianizing of this formidable race was a protective measure for the 
safety of tlie Eomanists, not in any sense a kind or philanthropic 
work for the good of the Norsemen, for either their temporal or 
spiritual welfare. The authors just quoted say with great force : 
" It is not, perhaps, so much an overwhelming number of these 
Northmen, as the new spirit they brought with them, that mixed 
with and changed the social elements of the countries they 
settled in." This spirit could only be destroyed by transforming 
it into the Christian spirit. The only country in which there 
has been no admixture, to speak of, of the Norse spirit, is Spain, 
and Buckle, as we well know, describes the state of things there 
with absolute correctness in this passage: "These, then, were 
tlie two great elements of which the Spanish character was com- 
pounded — loyalty and superstition ; reverence for their kings 
and reverence for their clergy were the leading principles which 
influenced the Spanish mind, and governed the march of Spanish 
history." It is obvious that the Church of Kome had a super- 
human work before it to reduce Scandinavia to such a condition 
as that. The time it took to bring about consent to baptism, a 
concession which did not mean as much as it seemed, was in- 
calculable ; Laing mentions the startling fact that '* this last 
remnant of paganism among the European people existed in 
vigour almost five hundred years after Christianity and the 
Eomish Church establishment were diffused in every other 
country." One reason of this was, as averred by Geijer, that 
the Christian ethics were so unlike the pagan, and put bonds 
upon the individual freedom to which the Northerner was not 
willing to subject himself; another was that the Scandinavians 
had no respect for the people who professed Christianity, no 
admiration for their institutions ; another, that there was so 
very little superstition in their nature for the priests to work 
upon. The following anecdotes illustrate this: "When St. 
Olaf proposed to Gauka Thor to be baptized, the chief answered 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 85 

that he and his comrades were neither Christians nor heathens, 
but trusted to their own courage, strength, and fortune, with whicli 
until then they had had every reason to be satisfied ; but if the 
king was very anxious they should believe on some god, they 
were as well content to believe in the white Christ as on any other. 
Arnliot Gellina told the same king that he had always been 
wont to put his trust in nothing but his own strength, which 
had never failed him, and that he had now thought to trust in 
the king ; but since he (the king) was so desirous that he should 
be baptized, although he was not aware of what the white Christ 
was capable of performing, for the king's sake he would believe 
on him." Pigott, who relates those highly characteristic stories, 
continues : " It was also said of Hrolf Krake and his warriors, 
at a much earlier period, that they never offered to the gods, 
but relied on their own strength. Some, although uninstructed 
in the doctrines of Christianity, rejected the superstitions of 
their countrymen from more exalted motives." So he justly 
argues in this wise : " The difficulties, therefore, which the first 
preachers of Christianity in Scandinavia had to encounter, may 
be attributed rather to the contempt in which these lawless 
warriore held a creed which threatened them with a life of peace 
and inactivity, than to barbarous ignorance, or even to any 
bigoted adherence to their ancient religion." In short, the 
ancient Scandinavians, like the ancient Greeks, left the worship 
of the gods to the superstitious lower classes. It was reserved 
for the Christian nations of modern times, and the free United 
States, to elevate this idolatry into the devout practice of refined 
and cultivated people. 

Laing, who has made a deep study of this subject, states that 
** the churches or temples of Odin appear to have had no con- 
secrated order of men like a priesthood set apart for administer- 
ing in religious rites," and that " public worship under any form, 
or private or household devotion in the Odin religion, cannot 
be distinctly traced in the Sagas." In commenting on tin?, he 



86 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

says : " We find in the North very few remains of temples ; no 
statues, emblems, images, symbols ; was it actually more spiritual 
than any other systems of paganism, and, therefore, less material 
in its outward expression 1" 

A comparison of the pagan festival Jul with the Christian 
festival Yule (Christmas) after the Eomanists had incorporated 
it into their system and remodelled it, will illustrate the difference 
in the mode of worship, as it is called, of these two races. The 
Norse festival is thus described by Beamish : " Yule was a pagan 
festival, celebrated in honour of Thor, at the beginning of Feb- 
ruary, when the Northmen's year commenced, and they offered 
sacrifices for peace and fruitful seasons to this deity ; it lasted 
fourteen days, . . . After the introduction of Christianity, the 
anniversary of Yule was transferred to Christmas, which is still 
called by that name throughout Scandinavia." And by Mallet 
thus : " There were three great religious festivals in the year. 
The first was celebrated at the winter solstice. They called the 
night on which it was observed the Mother Night, as that Avhich 
produced all the rest ; and this epoch was rendered the more re- 
markable as they dated from thence the beginning of the year, 
which among the Northern nations was computed from one winter 
solstice to another, as the month was from one new moon to the 
next. This feast, which was very considerable, was named Jul, 
and was celebrated in honour of Frej, or the sun, in order to 
obtain a propitious year and fruitful seasons." 

So little weight did the Northern people attach to baptism, 
when the proselyters, by dint of arduous efforts, had at last got 
them that far, that a story is told of one man who was baptized 
twenty times. As Laing observes : " Christianity in Scandi- 
navia seems, in the eleventh century, to have consisted merely 
in the ceremony of baptism, without any instruction in its 
doctrines." It seemed in many instances to have been merely 
the deference that well-bred people, when travelling in foreign 
lands, pay to the natives of the country they happen to be in, 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 87 

to judge from this remark of Wheaton's : '^ On their return to 
their native country, they made no scruple to conform to the 
external practices of heathenism, believing that Thor, and the 
other deities of the ISTortb, were to be adored as the local gods of 
Norway, in the same manner as Christ was worshipped in 
England as the national god of that country." 

However, converted they were, after a long struggle and a 
sanguinary one. Expressing his satisfaction over this^ as befitted 
a canon, Adam of Bremen says naively : " For the rest, the 
opinion has already become prevalent with the people, tliat 
the god of the Christians is the strongest, and that one 
is often cheated by the other gods, but that this god is 
always near as a sure and timely help." It is not clear whether 
by " god " he means Christ or the Supreme Being, but, at any 
rate, it i^ plain that the new religion was an experiment, that it 
was only taken on trial. The following paragraph of Oswald's — 
" The so-called Christian countries of JSTorthern Europe were not 
converted before the eleventh century of our era, and revolted in 
time to prevent their utter ruin" — shows that the experiment was 
not altogether a satisfactory one, and that the old troubles had 
hroken oiit afresh. To make a condensed statement of the first 
protest of the Scandinavian ISTorth against the supremacy of 
Rome, Gustaf Vasa, in Sweden, again demonstrated the opposite 
tendency of the North from that of the South by eradicating 
Roman Catholicism in Sweden simultaneously with Philip II. 's 
eradication of Protestantism in Spain. In about ten years the 
last vestige of the Reformation disappeared in Spain, but in less 
time than that the spirit of Romanism was banished from 
Sweden, and Norway and Denmark were scarcely less vigorous 
in expelling it. Philip II. declared that " it was better 
not to reign at all than to reign over heretics ; " Gustaf I. de- 
clared by his acts that he would only reign over free men, and 
that neither he nor his subjects owed allegiance to Rome. 

On the presumption, however, that the conversion of the 



88 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

pngan North to Cluistianity was a genuine one, tlie Romish 
Church proceeded to obhterate all traces of this abominable 
paganism which had so long defied it; its notorious acts in 
Greece were repeated throughout the length and breadth of 
Scandinavia ; submission to it had naturally not abated its 
hatred, there was still retribution to wreak on the contumacious 
race that had baffled it, scorned it ; all the descendants of this 
race, for generations to come, should be made to feel the im- 
placable wrath of the outraged power that has its seat in the 
Eternal City. Having control of literature, a ready means 
offered itself. The Church could corrupt history, brand the 
memory of the Norsemen eternally, by representing all their 
deeds as those of ferocious, bloodthirsty barbarians, by accusing 
them of such foul crimes as would pale the crimes of the Church, 
and by systematically concealing all achievements of theirs, of 
whatever nature, that would awaken the admiration or gratitude 
of posterity. The discovery of the Neio World hij the Norse- 
men was the one event that must most sedulously be concealed ! 

"We can note Papish operations, step by step, through the 
centuries; the conversion or amalgamation of the Northern 
pagans into Christian subjects, of free soil into Church territory, 
of pagan festivals into religious holidays, of Norse deeds into 
the means of gratifying the Eomanists' inordinate desire for 
power, — this is the fell work that has been accomplished through 
the ages. And the consummation of this iniquity was reserved 
for the nineteenth century, to be out-worked on American soil ! 

All authors and historians not party to the plot, those of 
liberal ideas, and who advocate the truth, have openly regretted 
that history has been made the means of concealing or perverting 
the truth in regard to the great religious struggle of Europe, 
and particularly of the Northern race who so valiantly defended 
the liberty that the sane, natural, healthy man, in possession of 
his full powers, holds so dear, against the combined assaults of 
the anti-naturalists, — the best name, all things considered, that 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 89 

has been given to the Eoman Catholic or Christian body. This 
definition has been applied by Felix Oswald, who in further 
elucidation says, " Only anti-natural religions have achieved 
that deep abasement of the physical type of our race which we 
see in China and Southern Europe," and expresses an undeniable 
truth in the assertion : " The night of the Middle Ages was not 
the natural blindness of unenlightened barbarians, but an 
unnatural darkness, maintained by an elaborate system of 
spiritual despotism, and in spite of the fierce struggles of many 
light-loving nations." But have the Komanists themselves ever 
deplored this horrible condition of darkness and degradation 1 
Has not Spain, the spot where tlie black darkness concentrated, 
been held up as the model of Christian excellence, for other 
nations to emulate 1 Has any effort ever been made by the 
Church of Rome to abate this darkness, to infuse health into 
its morally-diseased votaries 1 Has not this, in every instance, 
been the work of heresy ! The Romanists did not even suspend 
their efforts when the limit of human misery seemed to have been 
reached ; there was still an unattained depth beyond, for which 
they strove with a hellish frenzy ! In Oswald's words : " But 
the efforts of the spoilers did not cease ; and it may be doubted 
if the Caucasian race will ever wholly recover from the effects of 
a thousand years' attempt to lure their children from earth to 
ghost-land, to poison their minds with the dogmas of pessimism, 
to sacrifice the pagan Elysium to the Buddhistic Nirvana." 

The caution cannot be repeated too often against placing 
credence in monkish records of the acts of their Scandinavian 
enemies ; several warnings are given by Beamish : " From the 
eighth to the eleventh centuries the Northmen carried on a more 
active commerce, and a more extensive maritime communication 
with foreign countries than any other nation in Europe. Such 
intercourse appears quite incompatible with that extreme 
degree of ignorance and barbarity in which so many writers 
would clothe all their actions and enterprises ; " and in another 



90 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

place he writes : " We should receive with caution all statements 
upon a subject to which national or religious feeling is likely to 
have given an exaggerated colouring. Our knowledge of the 
excesses of the Northern invaders is chiefly derived fronx the 
evidence of monkish chroniclers, whose Christian faith and 
feelings wore no less outraged by the deeds than the infidelity 
of the pagan ravagers, and who, writing in many cases long 
after the events, would naturally aid defective evidence with a 
fervid zeal and fertile imagination." Buckle has been peculiarly 
observant of tliis uniform vitiation of historical accounts, and 
traces the operation of the same causes even up in the North : 
" But in the ninth and tenth centuries Christian missionaries 
found their way across the Baltic, and introduced a knowledge 
of their religion among the inhabitants of Northern Europe. 
Scarcely was this effected, when the sources of history began to 
be poisoned." His " History of Civilization " is no more nor 
less than the history of the conflict of science, invention, 
research, enlightenment, with the theological system that was 
against everything but bigotry and idolatry, substituting the de- 
basing worship of the Cross for the true aim of human existence. 
The concealment of the Norse discovery of America was the 
negative part of the Romanists' work; when Christopher 
Columbus, a nameless Italian adventurer, appeared upon the 
scene of action, their positive work began, namely, the sub- 
stitution of another discoverer for the original ones, and a 
transfer of all the benefits of the Norse discovery to the Roman 
Catholic power : the foundation had been laid ; they would now 
raise the superstructure. Columbus was a particularly obscure 
man ; no one knew where he was born, — " the question of 
Columbus' birthplace has been almost as hotly contested as 
that of Homer," remarks Arthur Helps ; no one knew what he 
had been doing in Italy before he went to Spain, after the idea 
of making a great discovery had taken full possession of him, and 
of course the Church kept its own counsels. That august 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 91 

institution has always been blessed with a long memory and 
was not likely to have forgotten Gudrid's visit, nor the varioiis 
reports of the Norsemen's voyages that had reached Eome as tin?, 
world's centre, and been duly recorded, and the recollection of 
the hated fact, which might after all be turned to account, had 
been burned into the minds of Popes and prelates for those five 
centuries by the anxious labour of preventing the remotest 
allusion to it from getting into any annals, 

Columbus made his way to Spain, whether with or without 
instructions from Eome may be left to conjecture. " Spain at 
that time," as the Roman Catholic author, Barry, proudly 
boasts, ^' commanded the destinies of the whole Catholic world ; 
her struggle against the Koran, the zeal of her crusade under- 
taken on the soil of Europe, excited the sympathies of the whole 
Christian world." Columbus went to Spain, from Italy, after 
he had made his visit to Iceland. It is altogether contrary to 
reason to infer, because this trip to Iceland was kept a profound 
secret to the world, that the heads of the Church were not privy 
to it. This knowledge of theirs of his visit to the place where 
all the information concerning the Norse voyages was preserved, 
his access to the archives of Iceland, his consultations with 
Christian prelates there, especially Bishop Magnus, who could 
put him in the way of learning all he required, — all this was the 
cause of the absolute secrecy maintained. There is more than 
sufficient evidence that the wily Italian obtained all that he 
sought in Iceland ; his discovery of America proves that ; hence 
to go to Spain was his next practical move, and entirely in 
order. He found himself one day, whether by chance or no 
can be imagined, at the gates of the monastery of La Eabida, 
in Andalusia, the guardian of which, Juan Perez de Marchina, 
had foruierly been the confessor of Queen Isabella ; if this was 
only a chance, it must be confessed that it was an exceedingly- 
lucky one ! Barry describes the meeting ; the mere thought 
of it kindles his Roman Catholic ardour : *' He welcomed 



92 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

fraternally the stranger, towards whom he felt a sudden 
attraction. A kind of intimacy immediately took place between 
them; for already before their meeting there pre-existed 
between them the strictest conformity of ideas that can iinite 
two intelligences. The Father Superior, after the first disclosures 
of Columbus" {what were those disclosures ?), *' invited him to 
remain with him, the present moment not being favourable to 
present his project to the Court." 

These are very strong words : " the strictest conformity of 
ideas that can unite two intelliyeuces ; " an invitation after the 
first disclosures of Columbus to remain there. Now an exposition 
of Columbus' scientific theories (so- called) as to a probalde laud 
in the Western ocean would have required hours, and after the 
hours spent in this way, the strictest conformity of ideas would 
not have been induced, for the strictest conformity of ideas was 
not wont to ensue upon such a talk between a scientist and the 
Superior of a monastery, assuming Columbus to have been a 
scientist. After the first disclosures, — had these been merely a 
rough sketch of a profound scientific theory, there would not 
have been an invitation which meant so much, that meant, in 
fact, active cooperation ; but assuming as an hypothesis, that 
Columbus informed Juan Perez briefly of his visit to Iceland 
and the satisfactory results from it, of the absolute certainty that 
there was another world lying across the ocean, and of the great 
good that would accrue to the Church if this land was taken 
possession of through his (Columbus') instrumentality, the 
prompt interest and zeal of the jjriest will be fully accounted 
for. This is only a surmise, to be sure, but a surmise that has 
a startling resemblance to truth. 

But to continue the narrative : " Between Columbus and his 
host nobody intervened. The confidence of Father Juan Perez 
Avas complete, because the demonstration was peremptory, — 
because the grand mission of the stranger was manifest 
to him. ... He heard, he comprehended, he believed. 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 93 

. . . The Franciscan recognized in Columbus the mark of a 
providential election." Doubtless, for Columbus exhibited 
tlie craft and secretiveness, the unscrupulous ambition of the 
religious body to which he belonged ; he had proved himself 
the proper man for the work, the most audacious fraud that was 
ever perpetrated, and the Church accepted him unconditionally ! 
Columbus was a man who did not let his left hand know what 
his right hand did, and this was a prime qualification ! 

He obtained substantial aid in his huge undertaking— it was 
a huge undertaking to push this scheme through on frail 
scientific grounds, on account of the necessity of concealing the 
true grounds from all but a few chosen confidants — from the 
Grand Cardinal of Spain, Pedro Gonzalez de Medona, through 
whose intervention, according to Barry's allegation, he procured 
an audience. Washington Irving, however, states that it was 
Luis de St. Angel, receiver of the ecclesiastical revenues in 
Arugon, who overcame the scruples of the queen, and gives his 
eloquent appeal : " He reminded her of how much might be 
done for the glory of God, the exaltation of the Church, and 
tlie extension of her own power and dominion. What cause of 
regret to her, of triumph to her enemies, of sorrow to her 
friends, should this enterprise, thus rejected by her, be accom- 
plished by some other power ! He reminded her what fame 
and dominion other princes had acquired for their discoveries ; 
here was an opportunity to surpass them all. He entreated her 
Majesty not to be misled by the assertion of learned men, that 
tlie project was the dream of a visionary. He vindicated the 
judgment of Columbus, and the soundness and practicability of 
his plans." This he could safely do, for he had the strongest 
material grounds for relying on Columbus' judgment, or rather 
the trustworthy evidence that Columbus had brought with him 
from Iceland of the existence of the Kew World. 

Then follows the affecting scene that has elicited so much 
admiration for Queen Isabella : " AVith an enthusiasm worthy of 



94 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

herself and the cause, Isabella exclaimed, ' I undertake the 
enterprise for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my 
jewels to raise the necessary funds.' " Irving, who is an 
extremely romantic writer, exclaims : " This was the proudest 
moment in the life of Isabella ; it stamped her renown for ever 
as the patroness of the discovery of the New World." But St. 
Angel said that he was ready to advance the necessary funds, for 
he evidently knew a few things that ha(J not been confided 
to the queen, and Koman Catholic (perhaps Jesuit) | as he 
was, he realized that knowledge was better than faith, at 
least in this instance. On this basis of knowledge he pledged 
the funds. 

" Armed with these royal commissions," writes Arthur Helps, 
who also describes the occurrences at the monastery in detail, 
" Columbus left the Court for Palos ; and we may be sure that 
the knot of friends at the monastery were sufficiently demon- 
strative in their delight at the scheme on which they had pinned 
their faith being fairly launched." 

Christopher Columbus discovered America, in the year 1492, 
in the icay described. Then history, pliant, ductile history, had 
a new office to perform : to extol Columbus and immortalize 
him ! The monkish chroniclers did this with as little scruple as 
they had consigned the true discoverers to oblivion. 

Aaron Goodrich, who has made a very close study of the 
character of Columbus, arrives at conclusions in regard to him 
that will clearly demonstrate to the mind of any candid and 
unprejudiced reader the reason why Barry, the Eoman Catholic, 
should say of him : " This man had no defect of character, or 
no worldly quality ; we have weighty reasons for considering 
him a saint." But Goodrich gives a contrary analysis : " By 
representing himself as the chosen of God, the champion of the 
Christian religion, carrying the light of the Gospel to heathen 
nations, by performing the smallest acts with aflectation of 
religious ceremony, by inserting Scriptural and religious sentences 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 95 

in his most trivial letters, by recounting miracles and interviews 
with God, by giving, in fact, a religious colouring to all his acts, 
he became the protege, of the Clnirch, which has continued 
through all alter centuries to regard him as one of her most 
zealous votaries, and is now strenuously urged to place him 
among her saints." 

After citing the remark of Lord Klingsborough — " The 
writing of history, as far as regards the New World, was by the 
law of Spain restricted to men in priestly orders " — Goodrich 
performs mucb-needed service by placing before the public, as 
a specimen of tbe exactions, the list of licences that were 
appended to a small work on Mexico, by Eoturini : — 

" 1. The declaration of his faith. 

^'2. The licence of an Inquisitor. 

" 3. The licence of the Judge of the Supreme Council of tbe 
Indies. 

'^4. The licence of the Jesuit father. 

" 5. The licence of the Koyal Council of the Indies. 

'' 6. The approbation of the qualificator of the Inquisition. 

" 7. The licence of the Royal Council of Castile. 

" Beyond all this the person must be of sufificient influence tD 
obtain the favourable notice of the bodies thus represented. 
Nor was this the end of the difficulty ; the licence of any one of 
these officials could be revoked at pleasure ; and, when repub- 
lished, the work had to be re-examined. The penalty attached 
to the possession of a book not thus licensed, was death. Such 
was the tyranny," he adds, " which weighed upon historical 
writers ; and it is not difficult to perceive how all these censors 
would deal partially with Columbus." 

An especial adaptation had to be made to the case ; the New 
AVorld was a dangerous subject altogether, which had to be 
handled with extreme caution ; the difficulty was not only to 
preserve the fame of Columbus from all heretical cavil, but to 
rigorously exclude from the pages of history all hint that 



96 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

Columbus might have had predecessors who were more justly 
entitled to the fame he reaped. 

" To ecclesiastical tyranny and popular prejudice," continues 
Goodrich, " may be added the exaggerations and falsehoods of 
the chief actor of the scene; " Columbus' visit to Iceland is the 
key that reveals all these exaggerations and falsehoods, and 
many of these were born of the difficulty of keeping his OAvn 
secret. He quotes Aristotle, Ptolemy, St. Isadore, Bede, 
Strabo, Petrus Comestor, St. Ambrose, Scotus, Pliny, Nicolas do 
Lira, St. Augustine, Marinus, and the Holy Scriptures, but not 
once the " Codex Flatoiensis " the manuscript finished as late as 
1395, which contained full information about the new land he 
sought, and recent information at that. Asa specimen of his 
policy, I quote an extract from one of his letters : '^ Much more 
I would have done, if my vessels had been in as good condition 
as by rights they ought to have been. This is much, and 
praised be the eternal God, our Lord, who gives to all those 
who walk in His ways victory over things which seem impossi- 
ble ; of which this is signally one, for although others may have 
spoken or written concerning these countries, it was all mere 
conjecture, as no one could say that he had seen them — it 
amounting only to this, that those who heard listened the more, 
and regarded tlie matter rather as a fable than anything else. 

Only a few years after this well-attested (1) discovery of the 
New AYorld, Sweden's period of greatness began; in 1527 
King Gustaf L proclaimed Lutheranism the State religion of 
Sweden ; his son, Carl IX., defeated the attempt of the Catholic 
reaction, of which Spain was the soul, to re-establish Romanism 
in Sweden ; his grandson, Gustaf Adolf, was one of the leading 
generals in the " Thirty Years' War," which effected the victory 
of the Reformation in Europe; in 1776, the Americau colonies, 
which had been grooving apace in these three centuries, declai'cd 
independence of Great P)ritain, and — the severest stroke in the 
succession of hard strokes that had befallen the Church of Rome — 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 97 

established a purely secular government ! The old Norse 
spirit, supposed to have been effectually quenched in the year 
1000, had broken out again, proven itself indestructible. It 
had again given Sweden good warriors, good statesmen, good 
kings and generals ; the country doomed to mediaeval obscurity 
and penance, again stepped to the front and made itself felt as 
a power in Europe, but, worse than all else, it made of the new 
American Kepublic the most formidable power for good that 
the powers of darkness, incarnate in the Church, had ever had 
to contend with, and this occupied an immense territory, rich, 
fertile, comprising enormous resources, and admirably calculated 
to promote enlightenment and the well-being not only of its OAvn 
inhabitants, but of the down-trodden, oppressed, priest-ridden, 
pining, inhabitants of Europe ! No nation, since the Scandina- 
vian North liad devoted itself to glory, had ever been so proud 
as the American Kepublic, so boastful of its liberty, its grandeur, 
its advancement, so impatient of the slightest touch upon its 
freedom, its rights. No people were so little disposed to bow 
to either Church or throne, indeed they made a national procla- 
mation of their determination not to bow to anything. Norse 
defiance flamed up again in the person of free-born Americans. 
The greatest possible progress was threatened in republicanism 
and free ideas ! 

What did the Church of Eome do, what could it do but 
claim the United States as its own, on the score of the discovery 
of America by Columbus 1 If this claim could be pressed, if 
the United States could be forced or cajoled into an acknow- 
ledgment of the discovery by Colimibus, all might be retrieved. 
But the Church must move with all prudence, the design must 
not be suspected until fairly accomplished. There was no 
reason to doubt that the United States would fall into the trap. 

Barry remarks a revival of interest ' and of biographies of 
Columl>us at the beginning of this century, and names Luigi 
Bossi, Navarrete, W. Irving, and Denis as being instrumental in 

S 



98 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

the favourable reaction. He boasts of his own book, "The 
Cross in the Two Worlds," as having " come to reveal for the 
first time the providential mission confided to Columbus, and 
to affirm loudly the saintliness of his character," An ascending 
series of publications, he declares, "show the progressive interest 
that is attached to the memory of Columbus." In lamenting 
the past injustice to Columbus, for his keen perception seems to 
have detected something resembling this even in Spain, he avers 
devoutly that "the Roman Pontificate alone preserved the 
thought of the apostolic grandeur of Columbus ; successively 
three Popes had honoured with their confidence this herald of 
the Cross ; the Holy See never failed in its regard for him." 
We can well believe that ! " But in our days," he cries jubilantly, 
" there is manifested a movement of reparative justice and 
friendliness for the fame of Columbus, Pains are taken to 
honour him," 

The plot once clearly discerned, these pains will be taken in 
vain. It cannot but be apparent to one who gives the subject 
a moment's serious consideration, that the Church that has fought 
the Scandinavians for ages in Europe, is not likely to fraternize 
or coalesce with American institutions that are the natural out- 
growth- of the Scandinavian spirit. There is a new conflict 
impending in the United States, The same people who were 
compelled to abolish the physical slavery of which the seeds 
were sowed by Spain, will now have to abolish the spiritual 
slavery which Spain and Rome with combined force are en- 
deavouring to fasten upon it. 

In finding fault with the four biographers of Columbus, 
Spotorno, Irving, Navarrete, and Alex, von Humboldt, who, as 
he declares, " denaturalize his person and his providential role" 
Barry writes this pregnant sentence : " The biography of 
Columbus has remained in the hands of his natural enemies . . . 
whence it follows that the view taken of it by Protestantism is 
the only one by which people have judged of the most vast, 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 99 

and evidently the most superhuman achievement of Catholic 
genius." 

Yes, he is right, the whole plot is most assuredly the most 
vast and the most superhuman achievement of Catholic genius ! 
What but Catholic genius, the genius for deceit, for trickery, 
for secrecy, for wicked and diabolical machinations, could have 
pursued such a system of fraud for centuries as the one now 
being exposed ! What but Catholic genius, a prolific genius for 
evil, would have attempted to rob the ISTorsemen of their fame, 
of the knowledge of their great discovery, and to foist a 
miserable Italian adventurer and upstart upon Americans as the 
true candidate for these posthumous honours, the man, or saint, 
to whom they are to do homage, and through this homage allow 
the Church of Eome to slip the yoke of spiritual subjection 
over their necks ! ^ 

One of the most interesting pages in history, the history as 
yet unwritten, will be the account of the manner in which the 
American people, the descendants of the Vikings, treat this 
attempt 1 



h2 



loo The Icelandic Discoverers of America 



CHAPTEE VL 

COLUMBUS' VISIT TO ICELAND. 

The best proof that Columbus went to Iceland, before perfecting 
his plans for the discovery of the land the other side of the 
Western ocean, is that he said so himself. The pregnant passage 
is quoted by Irving, in his " Life of Columbus : " " While the 
design of attempting the discovery in the West was maturing 
in the mind of Columbus, he made a voyage to the North of 
Europe. Of this we have no other memorial than the following 
passage, extracted by his son from one of his letters : ' In the 
year 1477, in February, I navigated one hundred leagues beyond 
Thule, the southern part of which is seventy-three degrees 
distant from the equator, and not sixty-three, as some pretend ; 
neither is it situated within the line which includes the west of 
Ptolemy, but is much more westerly. The English, principally 
those of Bristol, go with their merchandise to this island, which 
is as large as England. When I was there, the sea was not 
frozen, and the tides were so great as to rise and fall twenty-six 
fathom.'" 

This statement, according to Professor E. B. Anderson, is also 
to be found in cliapter four of the biography which the son 
of Christopher Columbus wrote of his father, and which was 
published in Venice in 1571. Its title is " Yita deiradiiiiraglia 
Christoforo Columbo." 

Professor Anderson's book, "America not discovered by 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. ioi 

Columbus," aside from its bold negation of the proud pontifical 
assertion that the saint in question did discover that country, 
leads attention to a point that has been almost entirely over- 
looked, namely, the connection between the true and the allerjed 
discovery; he says : "While the various writers here alluded to" 
(he goes over the ground pretty thoroughly) " freely admit the 
fact that the N'orsomen, as well as others, discovered and ex- 
plored parts of America long before Columbus, they are unwilling 
to believe that there is any historical connection between the 
discovery of the Norsemen and tliat of Columbus ; or, in other 
words, that Columbus profited in any way by the Norsemen's 
knowledge of America. This is all the more singular since 
none of them even try to deny the statement made by Fernando 
Columbo, his son, that he (Christopher Columbus) not only 
spent some time in Iceland, in 1477, but sailed 300 miles 
beyond, which must have brought him nearly within sight of 
Greenland. We are informed that he was an earnest student, 
and the best geographer and map-maker of his day. He was a 
diligent reader of Aristotle, Seneca, and Strabo. Why not also 
of Adam of Bremen, who, in his volume published in the year 
1076, gave an accurate and well-authenticated account of 
Vinland (New England) 1 " He goes on to say that he believes 
that " Columbus was a scholar who industriously studied all 
books and manuscripts that contained any information about 
voyages and discoveries ; that his searching mind sought out 
the writings of Adam of Bremen, that well-known historian 
who in the most unmistakable and emphatic language speaks of 
the Norse discovery of Vinland ; that the information thus 
gathered induced him to make his voyage to Iceland." 

Aaron Goodrich, on the othep hand, dt)es not believe that 
Columbus went to Iceland, notwithstanding Columbus wrote 
about his visit there to his son and his son quoted the passage 
in his letter, — and he doubts this for the very reason that 
should have made him credit it implicitly, namely, because 



I02 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

Columbus has so very little to say about it. Goodrich 
comments : " He does not give any reasons for such a voyage 
(to Iceland) nor mention the ship he sailed in, or the port he 
sailed from ; he gives nothing, in fact, but the most vague 
assertions. All contemporary writers, State papers, &c., are 
silent upon the subject, when less important matters are re- 
corded." It is astonishing that so shrewd a writer as Good- 
rich, who seems to have fathomed Columbus' motives in all 
other regards, should have expected him to give his reasons for 
the voyage, mention the ship he sailed in and the port he sailed 
from, when he was going on a secret expedition, probably com- 
missioned by the Pope himself, for the purpose of stealing 
knowledge that would put the Church in possession of a vast 
new territory for the acquisition of gold, slaves, and souls ! 
This secrecy is prima-facie evidence that he went to Iceland. 
But it would have been better for the Church of Rome if his son 
had burned this letter as soon as he had read it ! On so slight a 
thread, on this little indiscretion of his in keeping the letter 
and mentioning it, rested the vindication of the fame of the 
Norsemen and tlie conviction of Columbus of a base fraud ! 

Barry, however, does not seem to doubt that Columbus went 
to Iceland. He writes in his usual ecstatic way : " We see 
him crossing the German Ocean and advancing to the Polar 
Seas. In February, 1474, he was a hundred leagues beyond 
Iceland, and verified some phenomena interesting to hydro- 
graphy. From the sombre horizons of the North, from the 
Ultima Thule of the ancients to the splendid skies of the 
tropics " — the writer does not hint at what Columbus verified 
in Iceland besides phenomena — "with his powerful faculty of 
generalization, he united together in his memory the harmonics 
of land and sea, seeking to penetrate beyond the poetry of 
appearances the great laws of the globe." This is not very 
lucid, but it is suggestive. There is nothing so good to hide 
a little hard fact as a lot of rhapsodical vapour. Far from 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 103 

seeking to penetrate the great laws of the globe at that precise 
period, the Italian mariner, who, failing of being a skilful one, 
was bent on being a lucky one, was on the hunt for those 
particular paragraphs, in some old manuscript or other, that 
would serve him as a chart to the coveted land in the West. 
This is only one evidence more of the elaborate disguise that 
was thrown around all his movements while at Iceland. 

R. H. Major, in the introduction to '' Columbus' Letters," 
mentions the fact of his having gone to Iceland, yet adds : 
" But upon the whole of this portion of his history there rests 
an impenetrable cloud of obscurity." It was indeed like a 
secret of the confessional, dividged only to the holy fathers 
themselves ! 

Arthur Helps, in his " Life of Columbus," asserts positively ; 
" We are sure that he traversed a large part of the known 
world, that he visited England, that he made his way to Ice- 
land and Friesland (where he may possibly have heard vague 
tales of the discoveries by the Northmen in North America), 
that he had been at El Mina, on the coast of Guinea, and that 
he had seen the islands of the Grecian Archipelago." And 
there can scarcely be anything more emphatic than the follow- 
ing words by Toulmin Smith: "There can be little doubt that he 
(Columbus) had gained the chief confirmation of his idea of 
the existence of terra firma in the Western ocean, during the 
visit which he is known to have made, before his Western 
voyage, to Iceland." 

It was on the coast of Guinea, as Goodrich has ascertained, 
that Columbus qualified himself in a branch of trade that he 
evidently considered indispensable in the future founder of a 
colony, for Goodrich states r '' For some years, it is unknown 
at what precise period, Columbus was engaged in the Guinea 
slave-trade, in which he subsequently showed himself such an 
adept with regard to the unfortunate Indians as well to de- 
serve the compliment paid him by Mr. Helps, who calls his 



104 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

proceedings and plans worthy of a practised slave-dealer." 
Professor Anderson states, for the benefit of those who have 
not read Goodrich's book, " History of the Character and 
Achievements of the so-called Christopher Columbus," that 
'' Aaron Goodrich pronounces Columbus a fraud, and denounces 
him as mean, selfish, perfidious and cruel. He has evidently 
made a very careful study of the life of Columbus, and we 
have looked in vain for a satisfactory refutation of his state- 
ments." Still less can the following statement, by the same 
author, be refuted : " Columbus owes most of his fame to the 
Church, which, charmed with the devotion he professed, has 
chanted his praises, and crushed any historian who would not 
join in them, as long as her power was sufficient." 

The next thing necessary for a full understanding of this 
momentous visit of Columbus to Iceland is to know the full 
extent of his opportunities there and the use he made of them. 
Much light is thrown on this by Laing ; in his " Sea-kings of 
Norway " he makes substantially the same statement as the 
one quoted in the first chapter of this book ; it is this : " It is 
evident that the main fact is that of a discovery of a Western laud 
being recorded in Avriting between 1387 and 1395 ; and whether 
the minor circumstances, such as the personal adventures of the 
discoverers, or the exact localities in America which they 
visited, be or be not known, cannot affect this fact, — nor the 
very strong side-fact that eighty years after this fact was re- 
corded in writing, in no obscure manuscript, but in one of the 
most beautiful works of penmanship in Europe, Columbus 
came to Iceland, from Bristol, in 1477, on purpose to gain 
nautical information, and must have heard of the written 
accounts of discoveries recorded in it." The writer also 
cites the paragraph in the memoir of Columbus by his 
son. Professor Anderson says, very pertinently, that ''there 
were undoubtedly people still living whose grandfathers had 
crossed the Atlantic, and it would be altogether unreasonable 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 105 

to suppose that he (Cohimbus), Avho was constantly studying 
and talking about geography and navigation, possibly could 
visit Iceland and not hear anything of the land in the West." 
He goes rather farther than other authors, hut still does not 
express himself as severely as the case deserves, when he says ; 
" The fault that we find with Columbus is, that he was not 
honest and frank enough to tell where and how he Lad 
obtained his previous information about the lands which he 
pretended to discover ; that he sometimes talked of himself as 
chosen of Heaven to make this discovery, and that he made 
the fruits of his labours subservient to the dominion of Inquisi- 
tion." This is undeniably a very grave charge^ yet it far from 
characterizes the religious felony of Avhich Columbus was 
guilty : he purloined the knowledge of a discovery of trans- 
cendent value made by men of a pagan race, but recently and 
very reluctantly converted to Christianity, for the purpose of 
securing princely honours and emolument for himself, the greatest 
conceivable aggrandizement for the Church, such an oppor- 
tunity for universal dominion as could never, in the nature of 
things, occur again in the life of the world ; and last and most 
important of all, for the purpose of making the New World, 
through its entire submission to the Holy See, the means of 
crushing out all tendencies to rebellion against the Church that 
might possibly manifest themselves again in Europe. The sway 
of the Church of Eome could not be complete without the 
acquisition of this new territory, of which the natives were to 
be forced into allegiance and which was to be colonized only by 
those firm in the faith. It is utterly impossible for this deed 
to be understood in all its enormity by those who shrink from 
regarding it as a religious crime, the most heinous one of the 
long list that the Church of Eome has committed, and which 
was to have been the glorious reward for all the others, 
emblazoning the favourite maxim of this hierarchy, " The end 
sanctifies the means," on the very skies ! Christians of every 



io6 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

sect, Pi-otesUiuts of all grades, treat l\om;m Catholicism very 
tenderly, for they cannot strike it at any of its vulnerable 
points, without striking that wliich is almost equally vulner- 
able in their own system of religion. Romanism creeps in 
everywhere under the cover of Protestantism ; Protestantism, 
whatever bears the name of Christianity, is its best shield 
and defence — in tact its sole one. It is only by i-egaixling 
Christianity as cnw, of which Komanism is the full expression, 
and Protestiuitism the diluted, the component parts of this 
being, when analyzed, Roman Catholicism and liberality, the 
fii"st not less evil, intrinsically, through the mixture, the 
latter only rendered less effective, — and by realizing the 
atrocious way in which Christianity was introduced in every 
land, and in every colony — by noting its deadly effects upon 
every race that were forced to succumb to it, that one can 
understiind the full nature of the crime under consideration. 
Now, however, the issue can no longer be evaded ! 

That Columbus had abxmdiint opportunities, in Iceland, to 
pursue his inquiries is shown clearly by Beamish, in his 
" Discovery of America by the Northmen : " '' Nor should it 
be foi-gotteu that Columbus visited Iceland in 1477, when, 
having had access to the archives of the isLuid and ample 
opportunity of conversing with the learned there through the 
medium of the L;\tin hmguage, he might easily have obtained a 
complete knowledge of the discoveries of the Xorthmen — 
siithcient at least to confirm his belief in tlie existence of a 
Western continent. How much the discoveries of the dis- 
tinguished Genoese navigator were exceeded by those of the 
Northmen, will appear from the followmg narratives." (Then 
follows the translation of the voyages so often referred to, the 
same that was published by the Prince Society, in Boston.) 

" According to Irviug's larger work," the Siime author re- 
marks, "this visit (to Icekud) took place in February, 1477, 
when Columbus appciu-s to have observed with surprise that the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 107 

sea was not fi-ozen. The learned Icelander, Finn Magnuscn, 
directs attention to the following remarkable coincidence : ' In 
the year 1477, Magnus Eiollson was Bishop of Skalholt in loo- 
land ; since 1470 he had been abbot of the Monastery of 
Helgafell, the place where the oldest documents relating to 
Greenland, Vinland, and the various parts of America discovered 
by the Northmen had been written, and Avhere they were 
doubtless carefully preserved, as it was from this very district 
that the most distinguished voyagers had gone forth. These 
documents must have been well known to Bishop Magnus, as 
were tlieir general contents throughout the island, and it is, 
therefore, in the highest degree improbable that Columbus, whoso 
mind had been filled with the idea of exploring a "Western 
continent since the year 1474, should have omitted to seek for 
and receive information respecting these early voyages. He 
arrived at Hvalfjord, or Hvalfjardarejri, on the south coast of 
Iceland, at a time when that harbour was most frequented, and 
it is well known that Bishop Magnus visited the neighbouring 
churches in the spring or summer." 

Laing gives still further information on this point, olitained 
from the same source and one other, namely. Captain Zahrt- 
mann on the voyage of Zeno, and Finn Magnusen on " The 
English Trade to Iceland," second volume of " Nordisk Tid- 
skrift," 1833. It is this : " Columbus came in spring to the 
south end of Iceland, where Whalefjord was the usual harbour, 
and it is known that Bishop Magnus, exactly in the spring of 
that year (1477), was on a visitation to that part of his see, and 
it is to be presumed Columbus must have met and conversed 
with him." 

In a review of that great work by Professor Rafn, " Antiqui- 
tates AmericauiB," which appeared in the Foreign Quarterly 
Review, for May, 1838, it is asked very aptly : " But what 
could be more to his purpose or better adapted to his views 
than the fact that the Northmen, the boldest of navigators. 



io8 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

had knowledge of a land in the West which tliey supposed to 
extend far southwards till it met Africa ? Or would not the 
intelligent Genoese find some suggestion in the following more 
accurate statement of an Icelandic geographer : ' On the west 
of the great sea of Spain, which some call Ginnungagap, and 
leaning somewhat towards the north, the first land which occurs 
is the good Vinland 1 ' " 

If we turn to Swedish authors, we find the same belief with 
them, that Columbus paid a visit to Iceland and obtained there 
all the information requisite to enable him to carry out his pre- 
sumptuous plan. Holmberg's words are conclusive : " With 
certainty do we know that Columbus toward the end of the 
fifteenth century, presumably in the year 1477, sojourned at 
Iceland, where he was sent by Englishmen, whose industrial 
mind had already fixed its attention upon Iceland's rich fisheries. 
Here he without doubt met the descendants of those who had 
first made said discovery, got knowledge of the written sarjor 
thereof, and probably also obtained fresh intelligence concerning 
the great land in the West, Vinland det goda, as history is oble 
to mention an American voyage only one hundred and thirty 
years previous. He was, however, sufficiently prudent never to 
reveal this, and such a trait perhaps diminishes his greatness. 
The edge of the well-known story of Columbus is through this 
turned against himself, and one cannot well avoid seeing a 
Nemesis in the fact that the New World did not obtain his 
name, but that of another who sailed in his wake." 

And in Spain, Avhen it became a matter of obtaining royal 
sanction to his enterprise, the funds to carry it through, what 
evidence so incontrovertible of the success that had attended his 
inquiries in Iceland as his supreme confidence— in himself ? — 
no, in the certainty he had obtained up there in the North, 
from records that did not lie, like the Southern ones, from a 
people who did not lie, and who treasured the great deeds of 
their illustrious ancestors,— as his grand pretensions, and, for 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 109 

that rantter, his patience and fortitude, which have been so 
much lauded, in holding out during so long a struggle and wait- 
ing ] This certainty, based on reliable Icelandic records, was 
more stimulating than scientific knowledge, such scientific know- 
ledge as he could command, more sustaining than faith, more 
delicious than even his own vanity ! He was not too proud, 
this man, to enjoy a stolen inheritance. 

As is well known, his plan stranded, in the first instance, on 
accoimt of his preposterously high demands. Irving, observing 
the fact, but misconstruing the cause, says : "So fully imbued 
was Columbus with the grandeur of his enterprise, that he would 
listen to none but princely conditions." Not with " the gran- 
deur of his enterprise," but with the money value of his stolen 
knowledge, the three-fold advantage of it to the Church, the 
throne of Spain and himself, was he imbued! " The courtiers 
who treated with him," continued Irving, " were indignant at such 
a demand. Their pride was shocked to see one whom they had 
considered as a needy adventurer, aspiring to rank and dignities 
superior to their own." 

Needy adventurer he indeed was ! But the consciousness 
that he had a genuine commodity for which he was sure to find 
a customer in the long run, gave him the hardihood to make 
large demands. Naturally insolent, this secret certainty inflated 
his insolence to the extreme of audacity. It was not reckless 
audacity, however, for he was sure of his ground, and could not 
very well presume too much. 

The reader will now be interested to know what share of the 
spoils fell to Columbus — these guaranteed heforeliand — as the re- 
sult of the knowledge he stole at Iceland, and which rendered 
this trip the most successful voyage on record. 

The following is quoted from Arthur Helps' "Life of 
Columbus : " — 

" The favours which Christopher Columbus has asked from 
the King and Queen of Spain in recompense of the discoveries 



no The Icelandic Discoverers of Aimerica; 

whicli he lias made in the ocean seas, and as recompense ft)r the 
voyage which he is about to undertake, are the following : — 

" 1. He wishes to be made admiral of the seas and countries 
which he is about to discover. He desires to hold this dignity 
during his life, and that it should descend to his heirs. 

^' This request is granted by the King and Qiieen. 

'' 2. Christopher Columbus wishes to be made viceroy of all 
the continents and islands. 

" Granted hy the King and Queen. 

" 3. He Avishes to have a share, amounting to a tenth part, of 
the profits of all merchandise, be it pearls, jewels, or any other 
things, that may be found, gained, bought, or exported from the 
countries which he is to discover. 

'' Granted hy the King and Queen. 

" 4. He wishes, in his quality of admiral, to be made sole judge 
of all mercantile matters that may be the occasion of dispute in 
the countries which he is to discover. 

" Granted hy the King and Queen on the condition that this 
jurisdiction shotdd belong to the office of admiral as held by Don 
Fjnriques and other admirals. 

" 5. Christopher Columbus wishes to have the right to contri- 
bute the eighth part of the expenses of all ships which traffic 
with the new countries, and in return to earn the eighth part of 
the profits. 

*' Granted hy the King and Queen. 

" Santa Fe, in the Vega of Granada, 

" April 17th, 1492." 

What share the Pope gave the King and Queen we already 
know ! 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. hi 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SCANDINAVIAN NORTH AND SPAIN CONTRASTED. 

The signal national act of Spain, which has given it a ghastly pre- 
eminence — this act extended into a uniform line of conduct for 
several centuries — was that of crushing out all the civilization with- 
in its borders, or in lands adjacent to it. That which distinguishes 
ancient Scandinavia is its persistent resistance to the power that 
enabled Spain to do the European race this almost irreparable 
injury, the national traits of the Northern people alone pre- 
venting the injury from becoming universal destruction. To be 
sure, Llorente and others assert that Spain resisted the intro- 
duction of the Inquisition, " It is an incontestable fact," he says, 
" in the history of the Spanish Inquisition, that it was intro- 
duced entirely against the consent of the provinces, and only by 
the influence of the Dominican monks ;" yet the resistance was 
but feeble, the ruling traits of the Spanish people, rightly 
defined by Buckle as loyalty and superstition, operating more 
decisively to further its introduction than even the zeal of the 
Dominicans. "These, then, were the two great elements of 
which the Spanish character was compounded. Loyalty and 
superstition ; reverence for their kings and reverence for their 
clergy were the leading principles which influenced the Spanish 
mind, and governed the march of Spanish history," states Buckle 
succinctly. The popes and bishops of the fourth century had 
profited of the circumstance of the emperors having embraced 
Christianity, and this gave the Church the reins of power, while 



112 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

the predominant traits of the Spaniards rendered them sub- 
missive tools for any infamy Church and Throne united might 
devise. This nation were destitute of that instinct which was 
the strongest in the Norsemen, the instinct of freedom. 

The motives for establishing the Inquisition must of necessity 
have actuated the Spaniards at large as well as the heads of the 
Church and the reigning sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, 
else the people, weak as they were, could have frustrated the 
attempt of these to establish such a system of terrorism ; but 
hatred of the Jews, a consuming envy of their superior pros- 
perity, as well as their learning and skill, prevailed everywhere, 
and the ecclesiastical and imperial proposition to persecute this 
race in a body, met with a hearty response. Llorente declares this 
with absolute authority : " The Christians who could not rival 
them in industry, had almost all become their debtors, and envy 
soon made them the enemies of their creditors." The Spanish 
Moors were still more obnoxious to them. How could a race 
who were Christians in the full sense of the word, steeped in the 
ignorance and superstition that this implies, tolerate the proxi- 
mity of apeople whose "culture and prosperity rivalled the Golden 
Age of the Grecian Republics " 1 This glorious height had been 
reached, affirms Felix Oswald, two centuries after the conversion 
of Mecca, "and, six hundred years later, the Moors of Spain were 
still the teachers of Europe in science and arts, as well as in 
industry and in agriculture." True Christians are manifestly 
of the same type everywhere, and the Spanish Christians could 
not have diflfered essentially from the class in Greece and Eome 
upon which Celsus visits such severe reprobation. " You shall 
see weavers, tailors, fullers, and the most illiterate and rustic 
fellows, who dare not speak a word before wise men, when they 
can get a company of children and silly Avomen together, set up 
to teach strange paradoxes among them. . . . This is one of their 
rules — Let no man that is learned, wise, or prudent come among 
us ; but if any be unlearned, or a child, or an idiot, let him 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 113 

freely come. So they openly declare that none but fools and 
sots, and such as want sense, slaves, women and children, are 
fit disciples for the God they worship." St. Mark also, in the 
second chapter, sixteenth verse, says that Jesus went surrounded 
by men and women of ill-repute, and that the Pharisees and the 
learned were astonished that He ate and drank in such company. 
In a few terse words Felix Oswald draws the contrast between 
the enlightened and unenlightened in Spain : " At the same 
time when Moorish Spain rivalled the god-gardens of ancient 
Italy, and every Moorish town had its schools of poetry and 
philosophy, Christian Spain was cursed with a chronic plague of 
mental and physical famines." Prescott also affirms that " the 
Spanish Moors in the Peninsula reached a higher degree of 
civilization than in any other part of the world," and, further- 
more, that " this period of brilliant illumination with the 
Saracens corresponds precisely with that of the deepest barbarism 
of Europe ; when a library of three or four hundred volumes 
was a magnificent endowment for the richest monastery." 

It was the same with the Albigenses, a refined, enlightened, 
free- minded people, opposed to the doctrines of Eome ; they 
excited the same feelings of hatred, envy and malignity in the 
Spaniards, and the command to exterminate all three of these 
races, the Moors, Jews, and Albigenses, was more than welcome. 
This ready acceptance of a fiendish policy in itself proves Spain 
to have been brutally debased. In religious parlance this nation 
abl)orred heresy ; in the language of truth, it abhorred civiliza- 
tion. Nevertheless, it must be admitted candidly, that it is the 
only nation that has ever pursued a thoroughly consistent policy, 
for Christianity and civilization are utterly incompatible and 
cannot exist on the same soil. If salvation has any meaning, if 
faith is necessary for salvation, if heresy is a crime, entailing 
the most frightful consequences, here and hereafter, almost any 
means are justifiable to prevent that crime, and no means less 
rigorous than the Inquisition could have checked all the natural 

I 



114 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

instincts of the Inunan heart and mind, tlic impulse, craving, 
determination, inseparable from human nature, for knowledge, 
freedom, happiness, progress, a natural and unrestrained life. If 
Christianity is better than all this, according to its own dogmatic 
assertion, which Spain implicitly believed, it was right to impose 
it there, through any means at command, which SjDain did, and 
it would also be right to impose it, at this present day, on all 
the nations of the earth, and through the same means, the only 
effectual means, the Inquisition. Christianity, in short, pro- 
nounces human nature wrong, all its attributes wrong, and sets 
about a reconstraction so violent, so contrary to the mental, 
moral, and physical conformation of human beings, that nothing 
less than the extinction of the species will efTect it. The Spanish 
Inquisition barely failed of this result within its own jurisdic- 
tion. Prescott sums up Llorente's figures thus : " Llorente 
computes that during the eighteen years of Torquemada's 
ministry, there were no less than 10,220 burnt, 68G0 con- 
demned and burnt in effigy as absent or dead, and 97,321 
reconciled by various other penances ; affording an average of 
more tha'n 6000 convicted persons annually," But in his 
preface, this brave and outspoken man, who with almost super- 
human courage dared to expose the full iniquity of the Inquisi- 
tion, describes the evil it wrought : " I have also shown that 
these ministers of persecution have been the chief causes of the 
decline of literature, and almost the annihilators of nearly all 
that could enlighten the people, by their ignorance, their blind 
submission to the monks who were qualifiers, and by persecuting 
the magistrates and the learned who were anxious to disseminate 
information. These monks were despicable scholastic theologians, 
too ignorant and prejudiced to be able to ascertain the truth 
between the doctrines of Luther and those of Roman Catholicism, 
and so condemned as Lutheran, propositions incontestably true. 
The horrid conduct of this lioly office weakened the power and 
diminished the population of Sp;iin by arresting the progress of 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 115 

arts, sciences, industry, and commerce, and by compelling multi- 
tudes of families to abandon the kingdom, by instigating the 
expulsion, of the Jews and the Moors, and by immolating 
on its flaming shambles more than three hundred thousand 
victims ! ! " 

Concerning this invaluable work, which will yet, I trust not 
in the far future, serve the purpose of doing away with Chris- 
tianity as the prime cause, not only of this particular evil, but 
of all evil, Prescott writes : " Llorente's work well deserves to 
be studied as the record of the most humiliating triumph which 
fanaticism has ever been able to obtain over human reason, and 
that too during the most civilized periods and in the most civi- 
lized portion of the world." Llorente gives his own reasons for 
undertaking a work fraught with such difficulty and danger. 
"A firm , conviction, from knowing the deep objects of this 
tribunal, that it was vicious in principle, in its constitution, and. 
in its laws, notwithstanding all that has been said in its support, 
induced me to avail myself of the advantage my situation 
afforded me, and to collect every document I could procure 
relative to its history." He was secretary of the Inquisition at 
Madridduring the years 1789, 1790, and 1791. 

The purpose was thus to exterminate heresy and heretics. 
Heresy, as we have seen, is a very comprehensive word, and in 
the effort to exterminate that, Spain was in reality exterminating 
all that was of value to the human race. In corroboration of 
this I quote several authors, for the testimony must be so 
abundant as to leave no doubt on this point. " It is remarkable 
that a scheme so monstrous as that of the Inquisition, presenting 
the most effectual barrier, probably, that was ever opposed to 
the progress of knowledge, should have been revived at the 
close of the fifteenth century, when the light of civilization was 
rapidly advancing over every part of Europe," writes Prescott, 
also remarking : " It is painful, after having dwelt so long on 
the important benefits resulting to Castile from the comprehen- 
I 2 



1 16 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

sive jDolicy of Isabella,' to be compelled to turn to the darker 
side of the picture, and to exhibit her as accommodatiug her- 
self to the illiberal spirit of the age in which she lived, so far 
as to sanction one of the grossest abuses that ever disgraced 
humaiiity." Buckle's verdict is this : " In such a state of society, 
anything approaching to a secular or scientific spirit was, of 
course, impossible. Every one believed; no one inquired. 
Among the better classes, all were engaged in war or theology, 
and most were occupied with both. Those who made literature 
a profession, ministered, as professional men too often do, to the 
prevailing prejudice. . . . The quantity of Spanish works to 
prove the necessity of religious persecution is incalculable ; and 
this took place in a country where not one man in a thousand 
doubted the propriety of burning heretics. . . . The greatest men, 
with hardly an exception, became ecclesiastics, and all temporal 
considerations, all views of earthly policy, were despised and 
set at naught. No one inquired ; no one doubted ; no one pre- 
sumed to ask if all this was right. The minds of men succumbed 
and were prostrate. While every other country was advancing, 
Spain alone was receding. Every other country was making some 
addition to knowledge, creating some art, or enlarging some 
science. Spain, numbed into a deathlike torpor, spell-bound and 
entranced by the accursed superstition which preyed on her 
strength, presented to Europe a solitary instance of constant 
decay," There were other practical results to which he also 
draws attention : " The Spanish Christians considered agricul- 
ture beneath their dignity. In their judgment war and religion 
were the only two avocations worthy of being followed. Some 
of the richest parts of Valencia and Granada were so neglected 
that means were wanting to feed even the scanty population 
remaining there. "Whole districts were deserted, and down to 
the present day have never been repeopled. All over Spain 

> "Hii^toi-y of tlie Reign of Feidinaiul nml Isabelln," W. H. Prescott, 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 117 

the same destitution prevailed. That once rich and prosperous 
country was covered with a rabble of monks and clergy, whose 
insatiate rapacity absorbed the little wealth yet to be found. 
The fields were left uncultivated ; vast multitudes died from 
want and exposure ; entire villages were deserted." 

W. H. Lecky, in his " History of Eationalism," describes 
another phase of the evil : " The persecutor can never be certain 
that he is not persecuting truth rather than error, but he may 
be quite certain that he is suppressing the spirit of truth. And 
indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the doctrines I have 
reviewed represent the most skilful and at the same time niost 
successful conspiracy against that spirit that has ever existed 
among mankind. Until the seventeenth century, every mental 
disposition which philosophy pronounces to be essential to 
a legitimate research was almost uniformly branded as a sin ; 
and a large proportion of the most deadly intellectual vices were 
deliberately inculcated as virtues. ... In a word, there is 
scarcely a disposition that marks the love of abstract truth, 
and scarcely a rule which reason teaches as essential for its 
attainment, that theologians did not for centuries stigmatize as 
ofiensive to the Almighty." 

Felix Oswald groups the evils thiis : " Hence, inquisitions 
and crusades, thirty years' wars, heretic-hunts, massacres of 
S:. Bartholomew, expulsions of the Moors, and exterminations of 
the Albigenses." He asks : " Has the happiness of the human 
race been secured, or in any degree promoted, by the dogmas of 
the Christian religion 1 " And then proceeds to say the words 
which the continued presence of Eoman Catholicism, or original 
Christianity, in the midst of civilized modern communities, 
renders so imperatively necessary : " Cowardice and stupidity 
have too long connived at the crime of abetting the dissemina- 
tion of that eaith-blighting superstition, and it is time to say 
the truth in plain terms. The demonstrable truth then is that, if 
all the countries of Europe that were destined to pass under 



iiS The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

tlie yoke of the Cross had, instead, for a thousand years been 
covered by the ashes of the fire-storm that buried the cities of 
Pompeii and Herculaneum, the world would to-day be benefited 
by the result. Our earth would be more fertile and prosperous, 
our fellow-men would be freer, wiser, and happier. The waste 
of the volcanic cinders would have proved less irreclaimable than 
tlie desert of pessimism. The survivors of the catastrophe 
would have saved their children from the alternative of death 
or moral slavery that awaited the next forty generations of 
their descendants. The nations of the Caucasian race would 
have been spared the systematic extirpation of their wisest 
and bravest men. The Saracens, whose Western empire was 
destroyed by the insane fanaticism of the Christian priests, 
would have cultivated the garden of civilization in a more 
grateful soil." 

Llorente states as a fact that " the war against the Albigenses 
was the first cause of the establishment of the Inquisition, and 
the pretended necessity of punishing the apostacy of the newly- 
converted Spanish Jews was the reason for introducing it in a 
reformed state." After a very thorough dissection of all the 
motives and objects, he says: " It is to these projects " — having 
proved most of them to be mercenary — " concealed under the 
appearance of zeal for religion, that the Inquisition of Spain 
owes its origin." Prescott also says that "some Avriters are 
inclined to show the Spanish Inquisition, in its origin, as little 
else than a political engine," and throws further light on the 
motives of the Pope that instigated it : " Sixtus IV., who at 
that time filled the pontifical chair, easily discerning the sources 
of wealth and influence which this measure opened to the Court 
of Rome, readily complied with the petition of the sovereigns, 
and expedited a bull bearing date November 1st, 1478, autho- 
rizing them to appoint two or three ecclesiastics inquisitors 
for the detection and suppression of heresy throughout their 
dominions." But it is reserved for Llorente to state this with 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 119 

full authority and reveal the ferocious brigandage of the Church 
officials: "Facts prove beyond a doubt," he says, "that the 
extirpation of Judaism was not the real cause, but the mere 
pretext, for the establishment of the Inquisition by Ferdinand V. 
The true motive -was to carry on a vigorous system of confis- 
cation against the Jews, and so bring their riches into the hands 
of the Government. Sixtus IV. sanctioned the measure to 
gain the point d.earest to the Court of Eome, an extent of 
domination." In revealing the intricate mechanism of the 
Inquisition, its invisible network, its secrecy, its diabolical 
craft and artifice, he shows how impossible it was for a victim 
to escape from its toils, except by a deeper cunning than the 
inquisitors themselves were masters of, for " the Inquisition 
employed every means and neglected nothing in the trials of the 
prisoners to make them appear guilty of heresy, and all this 
was done with an appearance of charity and compassion, and 
in the name of Jesus Christ." Prescott, too, remarks: "The 
sword of justice was observed, in particular, to strike at the 
Avealthy, the least pardonable offenders in time of proscription." 

This strips away the last disguise ; whatever religious zeal, 
bigotry, or fanaticism may have fired the uninitiated, the heads 
of the Church at Kome were actuated by money-greed and love 
of dominion ; this also removes the last excuse of those religious 
persons everywhere, who are always ready to extenuate the 
crimes of the Church and to find justification for all forms of 
intolerance. The Inquisition was highway robbery and murder 
on a stupendous scale. If missionary work of all kinds, con- 
version, and proselyting is less than that in our own day, it is 
only because the moment is not propitious for the full operation 
of the system, the Church not being in a position to employ all 
its resources. Wo other nation than Spain has ever allowed it 
to exercise its full prerogative. 

This privilege extended over a considerable length of time, as 
Llorentc shows : " Charles V. protected it (the Inquisition) from 



120 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

motives of policy, being convinced it vs^as the only means of 
preventing the heresy of Luther from penetrating into Spain. 
Philip II. was actuated by superstition and tyranny to uphold 
it ; and even extended its jurisdiction to the excise, and made 
the exporters of horses into France liable to seizure by the 
officers of the tribunal, as persons suspected of heresy. 
Philip III., Philip IV., and Charles II. pursued the same 
course, stimulated by similar fanaticism and imbecility, when 
the reunion of Portugal to Spain led to the discovery of many 
Jews. Philip V. maintained the Inquisition from considerations 
of mistaken policy, inherited from Louis XIV., who made him 
believe that such rigour would ensure the tranquillity of the 
kingdom, which was always in danger when many religions 
were tolerated. Ferdinand VL and Charles III. befriended 
this holy office, because they would not deviate from the course 
that their father had traced, and because the latter hated the 
freemasons. Lastly, Charles IV. supported the tribunal, be- 
cause the French Revolution seemed to justify a system of 
surveillance, and he found a firm support in the zeal of the 
inquisitors-general, always attentive to the preservation and 
extension of their power, as if the sovereign authority could 
find no surer means of strengthening the throne than the terror 
inspired by an Inquisition." 

The Inquisition has continued into the present century. The 
Spaniards made an abortive attempt to abolish it in 1820, and 
we learn that it Avas mitigated in 1834 ; it can almost be 
regarded throughout as a modern institution, Spain's defence 
against the encroachment of enlightenment through the Moors, 
the Jews, the Albigenses, French infidelity, and Lutheranism ! 
It is not so very long since this paragraph appeared in a New 
York paper: "What is the matter with Spain? She seems to 
be utterly dull, lifeless, and inert. Germany, France, and 
Italy are pressing on grandly towards liberal and representa- 
tive government, sloughing tlie gangrene of vicious political 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 121 

practices, and breaking down the barriers' reared by the enemies 
of the people. Everywhere within their boundaries is life and 
activity, mental and physical." 

Spain's hope for the future has manifestly lain in the 
characteristic effort to gain spiritual ascendency in the United 
States through foisting upon the young and rich Eepublic, 
as discoverer, saint, paragon, claimant-in-chief for American 
gratitude, the Italian fanatic and charlatan, Christopher Co- 
lurabus! In its folly and infatuation, Spain no doubt looks 
forward to the re-es,tablishment of the Inquisition on American 
soil, where the opportunities for persecution and confiscation 
would be more brilliant even than in Spain, when three races 
were extirpated ! 

With what sickening disgust and loathing one turns from this 
black picture, from the nation which, in alliance with Rome, 
blighted the race ! But if Spain, past or present, is the most 
horrible subject in Europe to survey, the North is the brightest ! 
Spain blighted, the North saved ! Spain exhibits deformity, 
the North the natural man ; one of the finest types the earth 
has produced, in some attributes excelling all others. Spain, 
in devotion to its religion, laboured for the extinction of man- 
hood ; the Northern nations, whether inside or outside of their 
religion, worshipped manhood, and cultivated it to a high 
degree of perfection in themselves. In this they resembled the 
Greeks, but were even more rigid in conforming to their own 
standard of excellence, tolerating no defect or weakness in 
themselves. Whatever they did was in obedience to the 
requirements of their ideal. And this was not from any species 
of fear; the hell of their religion, if anything of so slight 
religious substance can be called a religion, was for those who 
felt fear, for cowards ; there these most despicable of wretches 
were consigned to a Palace of Anguish, had Famine for their 
board, Slowness and Delay for their attendants, and slept on a 
Bed of Care ; and this is so purely retributive justice tliat no 



122 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

thinking jDcrson can deplore it. Their hell would be filled with 
the elect of the Christian world, and Spain, with its two dis- 
tinguishing national traits, " loyalty and superstition," would 
go there en masse, together with the hordes of zealots it has 
propagated in other lands, and in its possessions in South 
America. If the Norsemen worshipped Odin and Thor, it was 
because they considered them good, brave", intelligent fellows, 
worthy of admiration, and not because servile adoration was 
obligatory upon them ; if any doubted the virtues or superior 
excellence of these gods, they did not hesitate to say so^ and 
did not profess to revere them unless this was their sincere 
feeling. " The Inquisition," according to Llorente, " encouraged 
hypocrisy, and punished those who either did not know how to, 
or would not, assume the mask." Christianity in itself en- 
couraged hypocrisy ; but hypocrisy was the vice that the Odin- 
worshippers, so-called, considered most despicable ; they were 
as free from that as the Spaniards were from sincerity. "We are 
all of us, at this present day, chiefly indebted to Spain and to 
Eome for what "Felix Oswald calls " that chief disgrace of our 
own age — the cowardly hypocrisy which, like an all-pervading 
poison-vapour, taints the whole atmosphere of our social life." 

A mythological religion did not satisfy the Northern mind, 
however grand the mythology and exalted its personages, al- 
though the Southern mind could thrive for centuries on 
" Buddhism and its daughter-creed," as Oswald rightly designates 
the Christian myth, adding that these " can flourish only in a 
sickly soil. Christianity developed its first germs in the carcass 
of the decaying Roman Empire, and still retains its firmest hold 
upon the degenerate nations of Southern Europe ; while the 
manlier races of the North resisted its propaganda to the last, 
and were the first to free themselves from its despotism." 
A. E. Holmberg notes this absence of the spirit of idolatry in 
the Scandinavians:" "Without doubt this lack (in the Asa- 
doctrine) of a rational morality, conduced with more thoughtful 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 123 

minds to bring it into contempt. "We find, namely, as far as 
that is concerned, very prevalent free-thinking, which directed 
itself now to something better, now to something worse, as well 
as a consequent tolerance toward those who thought differently, 
which, however, declined toward the close of that doctrine's 
life." 

That the l^orsemen took their divinities entirely on their 
merits is proven by a multitude of anecdotes from those times, 
and that they were not allowed to subject Jesus Clirist to the 
same criticism must have been a most surprising after-revelHtion 
to them ! The following stories are narrated by Mallet, in his 
" Northern Antiquities : " " In the history of Olaf Tryggveson 
a warrior fears not to say publicly that he relies much more on 
his own strength and on his arms, than upon Thor or Odin. 
Another, in the same book, speaks thus to his friend : * I would 
have thee know that I believe neither in idols nor spirits. I 
have travelled in many places; I have met with giants and 
monstrous men : they could never overcome me ; thus to this 
present hour my own force and courage are the sole objects of 
my belief.' ... In an Icelandic chronicle a vain-glorious man 
makes his boast to a Christian missionary that he had never 
yet acknowledged any religion, and that his own strength and 
abilities were everything to him. For the same reason others 
refused to sacrifice to the gods of whom they had no need. . . . 
In the life of King Olaf Tryggveson, mention is made of a man 
who was condemned to exile for having sung in a public place, 
verses the sense of which was to this purpose, ' I will not insult 
or affront the gods ; nevertheless the goddess Freja inspires me 
with no respect : it must certainly be that either she or Odin 
are chimerical deities.' " 

Free to think and act, to follow their impulses, the dearest aim 
of the Norsemen was to cultivate character, to attain that 
degree of excellence which would make their life a joy to them ; 
their heaven was only valuable to them as following upon a 



124 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

valuable life here on earth, and they were never disposed to 
resign this life for the sake of a future one ; if they sought 
death, or met it bravely, it was for other reasons, not savouring 
of sickly renunciation. This aim of theirs to be great, developed 
a heroic age ; the Avarriors and the bards emulated each other, 
one to supply valorous deeds, worthy of being eulogized in in- 
spired improvization, the other to praise these deeds as they 
deserved, and transmit the memory of them to posterity. The 
court was the scene of this laurel-crowning, and the king, the 
comrade of the warriors, not an isolated despot enjoining homage 
and plotting ruin for his subjects, was a fellow-aspirant for these 
honours, gaining his glory on the same high path. So much 
were the bards respected, that one of these, though a stranger, 
needed no introduction at court. P. E. Miiller, who is one of 
the most reliable of authors on this subject, asserts that "no 
nation ever possessed a poetry more strictly national than the 
Scandinavian." This was due to the fact that the individuals 
of the nation possessed character, that their actions and thoughts 
were spontaneous, allowing free play to their genius, which in 
its turn, feeling no curb or restriction, engendered a boundless am- 
bition and love of fame. " Harold H&rfager's reign," says Miiller, 
" was the Augustan age of the Scalds. Ambitious and warlike, 
he kept a splendid court, to which he sought to draw all the 
distinguished men of his country." The advent of Christianity 
changed things in this respect. The same author continues: 
" Olaf Tryggveson's zeal for Christianity caused him rather to 
discourage than to favour the Scalds ; but one of them, indig- 
nant at seeing his art slighted, forced the king to listen to his 
song, by declaring that if he did not, he would immediately 
abjure Christianity, which Olaf, with much trouble, had induced 
him to embrace." Some other words of Miiller's bear upon the 
point I have drawn attention to, the cultivation of character 
among the Norsemen, an object which the Christians have 
uniformly neglected out of contempt for their own nature, and 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 125 

human nature in general, and the other members of the com- 
munity, in modern times, passive Christians for the most part, 
vv'(>aring the badge, but evading the observances, have set aside, 
for the reason that the pursuit of knowledge or wealth was 
more agreeable to them, requiring one or other of these to 
stimulate pride in themselves or even self-respect. The modern 
man, as a rule, has no very great respect for character in the 
abstract, does not believe in it, in fact ; he believes that men 
are made by their circumstances, not that truth, courage, sin- 
cerity, goodness, have the slightest power in and of themselves, 
or that these mould circumstances. Here we see the blessed 
fruits of the Spanish Inquisition. The stigma still attached to 
heresy, heterodox views or freethought, is another. 

The words of Miiller referred to are these: "The importance 
attached by the Scandinavians to the delineation of character is 
evident from the language itself, which is much richer than any 
other of Europe in all terms expressive of characteristic qualities, 
whether of mind or body, so as to be able to convey the strength, 
weakness, obstinacy, quarrelsome or peaceable disposition of 
every individual in its finest shades." The vocation of Scald, 
therefore, was one that required the nicest discrimination and 
power of analysis, as well as rhetorical skill, and as absolute 
truthfulness was demanded both by the subject of the epic, if 
he happened to be present, and the assembled hearers, this 
could only be gained by accuracy of perception, the same exact- 
ness in delineating traits of character, all that pertains to one 
individuality as distinct from another, as an artist must use in 
portraying features that are to be a true likeness of the sitter. 
As knowledge of character could only be attained through 
knowledge of the world, and as the characters to be drawn, far 
from being simple, provincial ones, of a settled type, were com- 
plex, finely- organized ones, developed through the largest inter- 
course with foreign nations, none but the most accomplished 
men of the world were competent to undertake the task of 



126 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

making that first oral record of their attributes, personality, and 
deeds that was to be preserved and transmitted as history. 
That the narratives from these times which claim to be historical, 
as distinct from fabulous, romantic, or my thological, are uniformly 
vouched for, by the best authorities of the present day, as 
authentic and reliable, is due to the correctness of the first 
analysis and description of the Scalds, the eye-witnesses, and 
keen, incorruptible judges of the events and persons they 
described. One could almost venture to say that this in itself ren- 
ders ancient Scandinavian history more valuable and trustworthy 
than any other. After the introduction of Christianity not even 
a Scald of the North could dare to " speak the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth ! " That which a Spanish 
writer says of the ISIoors: "Their trustworthiness was such, 
that their bare word was more relied on than a \mtten contract 
is now among us," and the rules of life laid down in Havamal: 
" A man ought to be self-reliant, wise, prudent, mild, hospitable, 
temperate, firm in friendship, magnanimous toward the weak 
and those seeking protection, inflexible in his promises and 
faithful in his obligations," were only possible among those who 
were un-Christianized. 

Consequently the Scalds travelled abroad, going from court 
to court, not only for fame and profit, but to perfect themselves 
in their high calling, to learn to see with their own eyes and to 
judge with their own understanding; such was their ability to 
form an opinion of their own and to rely on it, that it is doubtful 
whether they would have read columns upon columns in the 
newspapers to know what was generally thought of such and 
such a hero, general, king, or leader, even if newspapers had 
been at their command, and no instance is recorded of a Scald 
going to a secret group of other Scalds to get their opinion of 
some high person before he committed himself to an open 
avowal. Much as they worshipped fame, theirs was not the 
name-worship and label-worship of the present day, an utter 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 127 

inability to value the work, or the production, or the deed, until 
they knew the name of the well established celebrity who 
could claim the honour of it. Fame was of that summer's 
growth, was plucked ripe from the branch, fresh fruit for fresh 
young lips, and no aspirant was kept waiting. If the hero was ■ 
a boy, a mere stripling, he enjoyed the same honour as if a grey- 
haired man, in fact more ; the Norsemen were not over fond of 
senility, and for a man to outlive his usefulness was a great 
reproach. Whatever fame a man was deserving of he received, 
and received quickly ; the Scald apparently was such a personi- 
fication of just criticism as modern civilization has not been 
blessed with. 

In Laing's preliminary dissertation to the " Heimskringla," 
there is much said in their praise : " From their opportunities 
of visiting various countries, the Icelandic Scalds were un- 
doubtedly the educated men of the times when books did not 
in any way contribute to intelligence, or to forming the mind; 
but only extensive intercourse with men, and the information 
gathered from it. . . . They had also the advantage of speaking 
in its greatest purity what was the court language in Norway, 
Sweden, Denmark, England, and at Eouen." Grenville Pigott 
adds another fact in regard to them: "It was not therefore 
until some time after the race of Scalds was extinct in the 
three great Scandinavian kingdoms, that those of Iceland 
attained their highest perfection. Their fame spread abroad, 
and the successful examples of Eigil Skalagrimson and of some 
others, encouraged them to perfect themselves, and to travel 
from court to court in search of fame and profit. We accordingly 
hear of them in the courts of England, Ireland, Scotland, 
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the courts of the Orkneys, and in 
various other places." 

But if the Scald was a good critic, he was also in presence of 
a good critic in the person of the king he extolled, the practical 
hero, as a rule, being possessed of what we consider, in this 



128 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

age^ the impractical part of a man's equipment for the world, 
intellectual gifts. The kings and heroes were not infrequently 
Scalds themselves, just as the Scalds were very often tried 
warriors. " The famous king Kagnar Lodbrok, his queen Aslog 
or Aslauga, and his adventurous sons, who distinguished them- 
selves by their maritime incursions into England and France in 
the ninth century, were all Scalds," as Wheaton informs us, and 
Mallet says : " In a word, the poetic art was held in such high 
estimation, that great lords and even kings did not disdain to 
cultivate it with the utmost pains themselves." i^s for the 
kings, two of them at least, Thomas Carlyle has a highly 
characteristic word to say about them : " Remarkable old men, 
these two first kings " (Harold Harfager and Gorm the Old) ; 
" and possessed of gifts for bringing Chaos a little nearer to the 
form of Cosmos ; possessed, in i'act, of loyalties to Cosmos, that 
is to say, of authentic virtues in the savage state, such as have 
been needed in all societies at their incipience in this world ; a 
kind of ' virtues ' hugely in discredit at present, but not un- 
likely to be needed again, to the astonishment of careless 
persons, before all is done ! " 

And the courts ? It would seem that these were not un- 
worthy of the Scalds. Pigott says : " The courts of the first 
Dukes of Normandy, composed exclusively of the descendants of 
the Scandinavian conquerors of JSTeustria, and continually 
recruited from their kinsmen in the North, were the most 
polished and chivalrous of the time ; and it is notorious that 
the chiefs who accompanied "William to the Conquest of Eng- 
land, looked upon the uncouth manners of the Anglo-Saxon 
nobles with undisguised contempt," He also recalls the fact 
that " the great traveller, Pythias, who lived about the time of 
Alexander the Great, and later, Tacitus, described the Scandi- 
navians as superior in civilization to the Celts and Germans." 
" Their royal house," says Adam of Bremen, speaking of the 
Swedes, " is very ancient ; but the king's power depends on the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 129 

voice of the people." Miiller, as we have seen, compares 
Harold H§,rfager's reign to the Augustan age. 

The courts, then, were the hotbeds of Scandinavian literature 
and history, and the Scalds were the gardeners. It now be- 
hoves us to consider the quality of this literature. That it is 
reliable, historically, is its highest excellence, particularly now 
when history has been proven such treacherous ground ; " Prof. 
Muller shows," says Pigott, " that the greater portion of the early 
Sagas may be depended upon as faithful historical narratives." 
Wilhelmi, in his " Discovery of America by the Northmen 
500 years before Columbus," goes still further, and declares 
that the Eddas and the old Norse sagor, and not Caesar, Tacitus, 
Procopius, Jornandes, Paulus Diaconus, Adam of Bremen, and 
the rest, were the especial sources of knowledge of the religious 
doctrines of the Germans. In the " ' Heimskringla,' " he says, 
"we obtain from the narratives of the Icelanders' extensive 
journeys through all Europe to Rome, Constantinople^ and 
Jerusalem, also the knowledge of the history, geography and 
antiquity of eastern, western and southern Europe." So tliese 
were no local annals of a single obscure race ! In regard to the 
extent of this literature, Laing contributes some valuable infor- 
mation: "The following list will show the reader"— one taken 
from that given by Thormod Torfaeus, in his "Series Dynastarum 
et Eegum Danise," from that given by Muller, in his " Saga- 
bibliothek," and from that of Biorn Haklorson— "that in the 
five centuries between the days of the venerable Bede and those 
of Matthew Paris, that is from the ninth to the end of the thir- 
teenth century, the northern branch of the common race was not 
destitute of intellectuality, notwithstanding all their paganism and 
barbarism, and had a literature adapted to their national -spirit, 
and wonderfully extensive." In this list of 169 works, forty- 
eight are historical, and forty-six works of fiction, while the 
remainder are mixed fable and history, poetical or mythological 
works. Besides these, there are other works citud by the 

K 



130 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

ancient historians. *' Stiarcely any of it," observes Laing, " con- 
sists of the legends of saints, or homilies, or theological treatises, 
which constitute the greater proportion of the literature of 
other countries during the same ages, and which were evidently 
composed only for the public of the cloisters." An eminent 
American author, Hubert Howe Bancroft, expresses an opinion 
concerning European literature, during this and a later period, 
tliat coincides perfectly with the statement here given: 
" Learning, such as it was, had hitherto been almost the 
exclusive property of the Church, which vehemently repudiated 
science as absolutely incompatible with its pretensions; now 
and then gleams of important truths would flash up in the 
writings of some heretical philosopher, illuminating for a 
moment the path of intellectual progress ; but such dangerous 
fires Avere speedily quenched, and that they might not spring 
forth again to endanger the religious equilibrium of Christendom, 
their authors were generally destroyed. The literature of the 
age consisted for the most part of musty manuscripts, emanating 
from musty minds, utterly devoid of thought and destitute of 
reason." 

After dwelling on the peculiar quality of mind, and the 
prowess of the Scandinavians, Laing continues: "It will not at 
least surprise the philosophic reader that some of this mental 
power was applied at home in attempts, however rude, at history 
and poetry ; but he will be surprised to find that those attempts 
surpass, both in quality and quantity, all that can be produced 
in Anglo Saxon literature during the same ages, either in the 
Anglo-Saxon language or in the Latin." In regard to Snorre 
Sturleson's " Chronicles of the Kings of Norway," he says: ''• His 
work stands unrivalled in the Middle Ages. In that class of 
literary production — -the lively representation of historical ev ents 
])y incidents, anecdotes, speeches, touches true to nature, bring- 
ing out strongly the character and individuality of each eminent 
actor in historical events — it may be doubted if, even since the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 131 

Middle Ages, any, excepting Shakespeare and Sir Walter 
Scott in their historical representations, have surpassed Snorre 
Sturleson." 

Wheaton oflfers further evidence of the concurrence of authors 
in respect to the merits of ancient Scandinavian literature: "In 
Iceland an independent literature grew up, flourished^ and was 
brought to a certain degree of perfection, before the revival of 
learning in the south of Europe. This island was not converted 
to Christianity until the end of the tenth century, when the 
national literature, which, still remained in oral tradition, was 
full-blown and ready to be committed to a written form. With 
the Eomish religion, Latin letters were introduced ; but instead 
of being used, as elsewhere, to write a dead language, they were 
adapted by the learned men of Iceland to mark the sounds 
which had been before expressed by the Eunic characters." 
His words ^^ the revival of learning in the south of Europe" 
bring to one's mind the extinction of learning there, incident 
upon the introduction of " the blessed light of Christianity," as 
it is rapturously styled. It is hard to believe that the following 
was ever true of the country where Christianity was allowed to 
shed ils full effulgence and germinate its peculiar products: 
*' Spain, a provincial part of Arabian dominion, was especially 
the seat of Arabian learning. Cordova, Granada, Seville, and all 
the cities of the peninsula, rivalled each other in the mag- 
nificence of their schools, academies, colleges, and libraries." 
And what were the effects of that enlightened and beneficent 
faith upon literature and learning'? Llorente states: " Since the 
establishment of the holy office, there has scarcely been any 
man celebrated for his learning, who has not been prosecuted as 
a heretic ;" and he gives a most appalling list of the victims 
among savants and literati, besides describing many of the trials 
and autos-da-fe. " The theological censures," he says, " like- 
wise attack worka on philosophy, on civil and natural law, and 
on the people. Those books which have been published on 
K 2 



132 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

mathematics, astronomy, physic and other subjects which 
depend upon these, have not been more highly favoured. The 
Spaniards have, consequently, been deprived of the advantages 
which other nations have derived from all the recent dis- 
coveries." 

No wonder then^ knowing the '^ holy office " as he did^ that 
he was amazed at what he experienced in England ! I quote his 
own words : " During the time I rem%ined in London, I heard 
some Catholics affirm that the Inquisition was useful in Spai)i, 
to 2ii'sserve the Catholic faith, and that a similar institution 
tcould have been useful in, France." 

How extraordinary, in tlie face of these execrable facts, of 
the chronology of horrors designated as the Middle Ages — it is 
a strange coincidence that the black death was brought from 
Palestine to Apulia and raged from 1347 to 1351 — of the woe 
and desolation, the brutal ignorance and diabolism that reigned 
supreme, and were the immediate results of the establishment of 
Christianity (the edict of the Emperor Theodius against the Ma- 
nicheans, in 382, being the virtual origin of the Inquisition, for, 
as Llorente states, " it is here that inquisition and accusation 
are first mentioned in relation to heresy ") — how extraordinary, 
I repeat, that any authors, outside of the priesthood, can at- 
tribute all the ffood that has befallen the race to this accursed 
idolatry ! Even so intelligent an author as Mallet, after 
expressing the highest admiration of the Scandinavians, and 
mentioning especially those traits of character which were the 
direct antitheses of Christian traits, as impossible in a Christian 
convert as a lighted torch in a ditch, — writes such sickening 
twaddle as this: " Such was the immediate eifect of Christianity 
in the north, an event which, considered only in a philosophical 
light, should be ever regarded as the dawn of those happy days 
which were afterwards to shine out with superior splendour, 
lu effect, this religion, which tended to correct the abuse of 
liccntiuus liberty, to banish bloody dissensions from among 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 133 

individuals, to restrain robberies and piracy, softening the 
ferocity of manners, requiring a certain knowledge of letters and 
history, re-establishing a part of mankind, who groaned undei- 
a miserable slavery, in their natural rights, introducing a relish 
for a life of peace, and an idea of happiness independent of 
sensual gratifications, sowed the seeds, if I may so speak, of 
that new spirit which grew to maturity in the succeeding ages, 
and to which the arts and sciences, springing up along with it, 
added still more strength and vigour," Could a greater satire 
be found than this upon the actual conditions resulting from 
Christianity'? It is a work of supererogation to single out 
particular phrases, such as " the dawn of those happy days," 
" to correct the abuse of licentious liberty," *'*' to banish bloody 
dissensions," " to restrain robberies and piracy," '' requiring a 
certain knowledge of letters and history," &c., as specimens of 
exquisite, although unconscious, irony ; it will suffice to blot 
out this pernicious nonsense with one sharp sentence of Felix 
Oswald's: '^ The warriors of the old pagan ISTorthland, with all 
their martial truculence, would have shuddered at the mention 
of the inhumanities which their children perpetrated at the 
instigation of their priests." No, " the dawn of those happy 
days" actually culminated in this: ''At the end of the thir- 
teenth century, the enemies of nature had reached the zenith of 
their power ; and, at that time, it may be said that tcitliout a 
single exception, the countries of Christian Europe were worse 
governed, more ignorant, more superstitious, poorer, and un- 
happier than the worse governed province of pagan Eome." 
This is Oswald's assertion again, and is absolutely true. 

This anti-naturalism, alas ! also fastened itself upon the North. 
The Norse nature, fortunately, was not as receptive to the 
poison as the Spanish, in fact, was not receptive to it at all ; 
the Scandinavians did not accept Christianity voluntarily, but 
they were deceived and forced into the acceptance of it, not 
Icnowing what it was. Althoii,<^li intellectual beings, shrewd and 



134 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

sagacious, tliey had nothing in their mental endowment that 
could imagine or fathom the hellish craft and ingenuity of the 
Roman Catholics ; neither their moral nor spiritual experience 
could enable them to anticipate what this new religion really 
was, or would do to them. In Spain, on the other hand, it 
was almost indigenous. Once there, however, in the North, it 
could not fail to have its ciistomary effect, differing only in 
intensity, inasmuch as the innate freedom of the !N'orthern mind 
could never cease to battle with the insidious oppressor. Thanks 
to this resistance, " the churchmen were not a numerous or 
powerful class until after the first half of the twelfth century ; 
they were at first strangers, and many of them English." And 
thanks to this same resistance. Bishop Brask, who tried to 
introduce the Liquisition in Sweden, early in the sixteenth 
century, failed in the attempt. The writings of the very first 
Icelander who began to transcribe the history of the North, or 
to reproduce the Sagor, betrayed thfe Christian touch. This 
man was Are hinn Frode, whose work dates from about 1120. 
He was a priest. Concerning his production, Wheaton says: 
" His work, the ' Landnamma-Bok,' is therefore to be considered 
rather as a chronicle of the Christian Middle Ages than a child of 
the Northern muse. But his talents as an historian are in- 
comparably superior to his monkish contemporaries on the 
Continent. He always writes Avith the good sense and the 
manly freedom of a citizen and a patriot, miaffected with that 
grovelling spirit of superstition which then darkened the face 
of Europe." His annals extend from the latter part of the 
ninth century to the beginning of the twelfth. 

Fortunately the Sagor had leen composed before ; to collect 
and transcribe these was the principal duty of the early writers, 
and their patriotism, conscientiousness, and habitual truthful- 
ness, led them to do this faithfully. The old material was 
sedulously collected and put into permanent shape, but the 
Christian religion soon deprived them of new, by changing the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 135 

spirit of the age. This is shown infcrentially by the following 
paragraph from Pigott's " Scandinavian Mythology : " " In the 
year 1262 Iceland was united to the crown of Norway. By tliis 
revolution it was indeed freed from the miseries brought upon 
it by its turbulent chiefs ; but all interest in public affairs thence- 
forth died away, and no Sagas were written, because there was 
nothing to Avrite about. They were replaced by dry chronicles, 
which also ceased with the great plague in 1350, and were not 
resumed until so late as the seventeenth century." 

Still the darkness did not settle down upon the North as upon 
the rest of Europe, and but a few years ago Wilhelmi could ex- 
claim : " Iceland's old glory has not yet disappeared, but reminds 
one, on the contrary, of the scientific life, which still develops 
itself there, of the brilliant antiquity, when this remote island, 
in the iieighbourhood of the North Pole, was, in a scientific 
respect, one of the brightest points on earth." 

And, indeed, how could it fail to be ; how could all Scandi- 
navia fail to be one of the brightest points on earth, with such 
people as are described in the following paragraph ? And by a 
foreigner, too, quoted in the first part of " Sveriges Historia : " 
" A stranger, who in an unusually high degree made himself 
familiar with the condition in the North during the time that 
is now in question, says of the Norsemen and their life during 
the last century of paganism : ' The stress that was laid upon 
intercourse with other persons, and the love for joyous festivals, 
woman's free and respected position, as well as the profound 
understanding of her relation to man, which is not seldom ex- 
pressed in the Sagor, the high value that was assigned to the 
poetic art and all attainments, the zeal with which one, through 
travel in foreign countries, sought to acquire knowledge, to- 
gether with many otlier traits in the ancient Northern folk-life, 
show, that one did not only take life from the dismal and rude 
side, and that we must not by any means imagine the Scandi- 
navian pagans to be such savage and insensible barbarians as 



136 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

they are usually described by their English and French enemies.'" 
In physical attributes these ISTortlierners were also conspicuous 
and compelled the admiration of their foes. A. E. Holmberg 
states that " the foreign annalists, who have had an opportunity 
to take closer cognizance of the Northmen who overran Europe 
during the Viking expeditions, coincide therein, that they have 
nev(^r seen handsomer or taller men than these robbers, at the 
same time that they praise their strength and bravery and also 
such traits of character as keeping their word and the like." 

It was no ferocious and bloodthirsty impulse that led them 
into warfare ; they made war because this was to them the path 
of glory. Their religion, so to speak, enforced bravery, just as 
the Christian doctrine enforced cowardice. Thomas Carlyle 
describes it well, when he says : " That Norse religion, a^ rude 
but earnest, sternly impressive Consecration of Valour (so we may 
dehne it) sufficed for these old valiant Norsemen." And did 
the Christians then never fight, never wage war, never shed 
blood, that they denounce all this so fiercely in the Norsemen 1 
And which were the nobler, wars, or crusades, for the extermi- 
nation of heretics, or wars of conquest over depraved and 
enfeebled Catholic nations for the purpose of founding better 
nations on the ruins of the old, of establishing free institu- 
tions and manly customs ? Was an instance ever known of 
the Scandinavians making a nation worse than they found it 1 
Their incursions were a severe remedy, to be sure, but has the 
thinking world ever considered how things would have been if 
the Vikings had never made any expeditions, but had remained 
quietly at home, allowing the swarms of black-gowned priests 
to rule the whole of Europe with the crucifix and to settle its 
fate for all time ? And when we Americans owe what we value 
most in life to the grand Norse conquests, why should we be 
loth to ascribe the same glory to these ancient conquerors as to 
Napoleon or any other modern general 1 

To be sure, they did not parade their intentions in the way of 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 137 

national reform and repuljlican organizations, but after their 
conquests the result was invariably the same, the work of recon- 
struction was begun at once, and all Europe was, in fact, re- 
modelled by them. Mallet does them full justice in the 
following description: " In effect, we every where see in those 
swarms of Germans and Scandinavians, a troop of savage 
warrioi's, who seem only born for ravage and destruction, 
changed into a sensible and free people as soon as ever they had 
confirmed their conquests ; impregnating (if I may so say) their 
institutions with a spirit of order and equality ; electing for 
their kings such of their princes of the blood royal as they 
judged most worthy to wear the crown; dividing between those 
kings and the whole nation the exercise of the sovereign power ; 
reserving to the general assemblies the right of making laws and 
deciding important matters ; and lastly, to give a solid support 
to the powers immediately essential to monarchy, distributing 
fiefs to the principal warriors, and assigning certain privileges 
proper to the several orders of the state." 

Warfare, too, aside from its martial or political bearing, was 
their chosen method for the perfecting of character, absolute 
courage Ipeing the finishing touch. They fought joyously, 
jubilantly, and met death wilh a laugh. " Accordingly," says 
Mallet, " we never find any among these people guilty of 
cowardice, and the bare suspicion of that vice was always 
attended with universal contempt. . . . Lastly, like the heroes of 
Homer, those of ancient Scandinavia, in the excess of their 
over-boiling courage, dared to defy the gods themselves. 
* Though they should be stronger than the gods,' says a boastful 
warrior, speaking of his enemies, ' I would absolutely fight 
them.'" 

But these people were much else besides warriors, were as 
remarkable for their versatility as for their surpassing ability in 
certain directions. Thus Laing observes ; " In the characters of 
great men given in the sagas we always find eloquence, ready, 



138 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

agreeable speaking, a good voice, a quick apprehension, a ready 
delivery, and winning manners, reckoned the highest qualities 
of a popular king or eminent chief. His talent as a public 
speaker is never omitted." And Prof. E. B. Anderson, too, 
exclaims : " Yes ; the Norsemen were truly a gi-eat people ! 
Their spirit found its way into the Magna Charta of England 
and into the Declaration of Independence in America. The 
spirit of the Vikings still survives in the bosoms of Englishmen, 
Americans, and Norsemen, extending their commerce, taking 
bold positions against tyranny, and producing wonderful internal 
improvements in these countries." 

In the Norsemen one continually has the gratifying surprise 
of hearing of a race who, in all the main political and social 
questions, were right in themselves, without the need of reform 
or agitation. That the people, in Scandinavia, had a voice in 
public affairs, is best proven by the fact that the people of 
America and England are free, at least comparatively so, in a 
political respect. Laing says of this : " Our civil, religions, and 
political rights, — the principles, spirit, and forms of legislation 
through which they work in our social union, are the legitimate 
offspring of the Things of the Noithmen, not of the Wittenage- 
moth of the Anglo-Saxons — of the independent Norse Viking, 
not of the abject Saxon monk." 

But nothing gives such conclusive evidence that our present 
state of civilization is not the outgroAvth of a steady progressive 
development from the earliest ages, but is the feeble revival of 
a civilization, ripe, far advanced, brilliant, that was destroyed at 
the beginning of the Middle Ages,— as the position that woman 
held in the North. " In pagandom," writes August Strindberg, 
" woman seems almost to have been man's equal. . . . Woman 
was treated by man with such respect and acted with such self- 
feeling and freedom, that any such thing in our enlightened 
times would be considerpd unheard-of." Ample corroboration 
of this is found in whatever author one turns to. Mallet 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 139 

affirms : " We find the reverse of all this " (the general condi- 
tion) " among the N'orthern nations, who did not so much con- 
sider the other sex as made for their pleasure, as to be their 
equals and companions, whose esteem, as valuable as their other 
favours, could only be obtained by constant attentions, by 
generous services, and by a proper exertion of virtue and 
courage. I conceive that this will at first sight be deemed a 
paradox, and that it will not be an easy matter to reconcile a 
manner of thinking which supposes so much delicacy, Avith the 
rough, unpolished character of this people. Yet I believe the 
observation is so well grounded that one may venture to assert 
that it is this same people who have contributed to diffuse 
through all Europe that spirit of equity, of moderation and 
generosity shown by the stronger to the weaker sex, which is at 
this day the distinguishing characteristic of European manners ; 
nay, that we even owe to them that spirit of gallantry which was 
so little known to the Greeks and Romans, how polite soever 
in other respects." 

Two things the JSTorseraen seemed to have understood by 
instinct — namely, that woman was naturally man's equal, and 
that the other life was, equally in conformity with nature, a 
continuation of this, under the same general conditions, aside 
from a change of physique. Complete sanity, on these two fun- 
damental points, enabled them to lead the sensible life that has 
never been led since by any nation of Europe, and never will 
be, until some remedy is found for »Christian hallucinations, 
which see in the other life unspeakable terrors, the most 
monstrous uni-ealities, and in the other sex (the true half of the 
nation as well as the man) a creature little less than an idiot 
and imbecile. But again it may be asked, how was this " spirit 
of equity," the political freedom, good laws, and all the other 
beneficial things in the Norsemen's possession, to be diffused 
through all Europe, save by the Viking expeditions that have 
been so much execrated 1 Were the monkish, or monk-ridden, 



I40 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 



inhabitants everywhere so docile, so eager for Northern know- 
ledge and enlightenment, that the N"orse leaders, splendid 
orators that they were, could have instilled it all into them 
through public speaking 1 Was it their moral duty to go into 
tlie land of the enemy as lecturers on reform topics, and to be 
slaughtered piecemeal by those fiends who knew nothing well 
but the action of fire on human flesh, or the use of the dagger ? 
Was it possible in those days, and with such a population as the 
Church had reared, to effect tlie conquest of thought and repub- 
licanism otherwise than through the conquest of the sword 1 
And if this had not been effected, what would the consequences 
have been to posterity 1 

But whatever brave leaders and statesmen did, the women of 
the N'orth were with them, to encourage and stimulate. One 
gets a new idea of the sex by reading about them. One realizes 
clearly, by these words of Holmberg's, that no feeble or silly 
•woman could share the thoughts of such men : " We ought 
above all to draw attention to the fact that there was with these 
an unquenchable desire for knowledge, a striving for wisdom 
and a respect for knowledge, which jierhaps does not stand 
forth so plainly in our enlightened time." And this is what he 
says about their treatment of woman : " With no ancient people 
has respect for woman been higher, her true value more appre- 
ciated, and her rights more extended than with our forefathers. 
She w^as, it is true, not the idol, for which one during the age of 
chivalry kindled incense and brought home the sacrifice of even 
his human worth — a position which is always unworthy of 
woman, as founded only on outer charms, and as the stop from 
idol to doll is only a hair's breadth. Still less was she, as with 
many other races of antiquity, man's passive slave, only existing 
for his pleasure, or doomed for his comfort to drag forth a joy- 
less and arduous life. The Northern woman's place was right 
between these two extremes, and such as ought to accrue to her 
as an important part of the community. She was, as woman 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 141 

always ought to be, mnrCs equal, neither more nor less, and this 
especially when she became a wife. Indeed we do not say too 
much, if we to woman in pagan times, grant almost the same 
rights as those she now enjoys, with the only difference that the 
general respect for her sex was really greater than that paid to 
it in our time." It must be remembered that these noble words 
are from the pen of a modern Swede, one of a race who have 
always accorded woman her due rank. He continues : " Of 
such respect, such freedom, the Northern woman of antiquity 
was well deserving for her innate high-mmdedness. Constantly 
we find her animated by the same idea as man, by that of free- 
dom, glory, and love of country." 

Pigott cites the Sagor for confirmation of the many points of 
excellence with the Norsemen, this included : ** If we consult 
the Icelandic sagas, many of which are faithful and unpretend- 
ing pictures of the times in which they were written, we shall 
find that the Scandinavians were by no means unacquainted 
with the comforts and even the luxuries of life ; that they 
were skilful mechanics ; held music and poetry in the highest 
esteem ; have some claim to the invention of oil-painting, and, 
above all, in their relations with the weaker sex, showed a 
degree of refinement and generosity which we may look for in 
vain amongst the Greeks and Romans in their highest civiliza- 
tion." 

There is still another point, not a reform brought about by 
desperate efforts, through socialism, philanthropy, new financial 
theories, or the like, but the natural result of wise and good 
legislation, that has not been mentioned as yet, and that is, the 
absence of poverty in the North ! Mallet speaks of it as a 
very remarkable feature of Norse government, and indeed it 
is ! He says : '• That the leading men of this republic (Ice- 
land) should have framed a code of laws, which, whatever may 
be their defects, secured at least an ample provision for the 
poorest members of the community, and suffered no one to 



142 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

perish from starvation, are facts which will always render Ice- 
land peculiarly interesting to all who make human nature — or 
the development of humanity on earth, in its multifarious and 
ever- varying aspects — the object of their special attention." 

But nov7 we must turn abruptly from this too fascinating 
contemplation of Norse antiquity, and trace the contrast in 
religious action, during the Reformation, between the Northern 
nations and Spain. Bishop Percy, in his preface to Mallet's 
work, calls attention to the absence of secrecy in the religious 
ceremonies or teachings of the ancient Scandinavians : " But 
what particularly distinguishes the Celtic institutions from 
those of the Teutonic nations, is that remarkable air of secrecy 
and mystery with which the Druids concealed their doctrines 
from the laity ; forbidding that they should ever be com- 
mitted to writing, and, upon that account, not having so 
much as an alphabet of their own. In this the institutions of 
Odin and the Scalds Avere the very reverse. No barbarous 
people were so addicted to writing, as appears from the innumer- 
able quantity of Euuic inscriptions scattered all over the 
north ; no barbarous people ever held letters in higher reve- 
rence, ascribing the invention of them to their chief deity, 
and attributing to the letters themselves supernatural virtues. 
Nor is there the least room to believe that any of their doc- 
trines were locked up or concealed from any part of the com- 
munity. On the contrary, their mythology is for ever displayed 
in all the songs of their Scalds, just as that of the Greeks and 
Romans is in the odes of Pindar and Horace. There never 
existed any institution in which there appears less of reserve 
and mystery than in that of the Scandinavian people," 

It is superfluous to more than allude to the systematic 
mystery and secrecy of the Christian Church, its Bible, creed, 
ministration, and all connected witli it ; I "will merely quote 
what Llorente says about the working of its characteristic 
institution, the Inquisition : " Secrecy, the foe of truth and 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 143 

justice, was the soul of the tribunal of the Inquisition ; it gave 
to it new life and vigour, sustained and strengthened its arbitrary 
power, and so emboldened it, that it had the hardihood to 
arrest the highest and noblest in the land, and enabled it to 
deceive, by concealing facts, popes, kings, viceroys, and all in- 
vested with authority by their sovereign." The "holy office" 
was in full operation when Cokimbus went to Sixain, and the 
notorious Torqueraada was inquisitor-general ; it continued, 
under imperial support, through several dynasties, but it is our 
purpose now to consider its work at the time the Reformation 
was taking firm root in Sweden. The Spaniards would have 
been less than human if Luther's doctrines had not crept into 
their minds, too; but the Pope was prepared for this contingency; 
according to Llorcnte, " in 1521, the Pope wrote to the governors 
of the provinces in Castile, during the absence of Charles V., re- 
commending them to prevent the introduction of the works of 
Luther into the kingdom ; and Cardinal Adrian, in the same 
year, ordered the inquisitors to seize all books of that nature : 
this order was repeated in 1523." The emperor showed him- 
self no less zealous, for " he commissioned the University of 
Louvain to form a list of dangerous books, and in 1539 he 
obtained a bull of approbation from the Pope. The index was 
published in 1546 by the University in all the states of 
Flanders, six years after a decree had been issued to prohibit the 
writings of Luther from being reador bouglit on pain of death." 

In 1529, King Gustaf I. proclaimed Lutheranism the State- 
religion of Sweden, and soon after deprived the bishops of 
their name and dignity, prohibited tlie invoking of saints, tlie 
use of holy water, pilgrimages, in short cleared all the Romish 
mummery out of the kingdom ! The Pope and his successors 
lost their power for ever in the North ! 

From Spain, however, they extended it to America, under 
royal protection as usual. "The Spanish possessions in the 
New "World," to quute Arthur Helps, '' occupied an iminenso 



144 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

extent of territory, namely from 40° 43', south latitude, to 
37° 48' north latitude, the distances from the Equator, on each 
side, being nearly the same. Humboldt has observed that the 
Spanish territory in the New World was not only equal in 
length to the whole of Africa, but was also of much greater 
width than the empire of Eussia." Accordingly, in this vast 
dominion Spanish rigour was exercised. The following state- 
ments are Llorente's : " Charles V. and Philip II. had regu- 
lated the circulation of books in their American states. In 
1543 the viceroys and other authorities were commanded to 
prevent the introduction or printing of tales or romances. In 
1550, a new decree obliged the tribunal of the commerce of 
Seville, to register all the books destined for the colonies, to 
certify that they were not prohibited. In 1556, the Govern- 
ment commanded that no work relating to the affairs of 
America should be published without a permission from the 
Council of the Indies, and that those already printed should 
not be sold unless they were examined and approved, which 
obliged all those who possessed any to submit them to the 
council. The officers of the customs in" America were also 
obliged to seize all the prohibited books which might be im- 
ported, and remit them to the archbishops and bishops, who, 
in this case, possessed the same powers as the inquisitors of 
Spain. Lastly, Philip II., in 1560, decreed new measures, 
and the surveillance was afterwards as strictly observed in the 
colonies of the New World as in the peninsula. In the year 
1558 the terrible law of Philip II. was published, which 
decreed the punishments of death and confiscation for all those 
who should sell, buy, keep, or read the books prohibited by the 
holy office ; and to insure the execution of this sanguinary 
law, the index was printed, that the people might not allege 
ignorance in their defence." 

Thus, simultaneous with the deliverance of Sweden from the 
power of Kome and the consequent infliction of the Inquisi- 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 145 

tion there, too, had the ruling monarch shown any weakness or 
irresolution, this fatal sway was extended over a teriitury 
" equal in length to the whole of Africa, and of much greater 
width than the empire of Eussia," in fact, over all that Avas 
then known as the New World. Freedom was born again in 
the JSTorth, tyranny forged new fetters in the South ! 

Yes, Americans, in considering this most frightful of all 
subjects, must be brought to the harrowing conviction, fraught 
with the deepest humiliation, that the worst atrocities of tlie 
Spanish Inquisition have been perpetrated on American soil, 
and that these were the results of the discovery by Columbus, 
these the scenes enacted in the Spanish colonies ! Voltaire 
has remarked that "an Asiatic, arriving at Madrid on the day 
of an auto-da-fe, would doubt whether it were a festival, re- 
ligious celebration, sacrifice, or massacre ; — it is all of them." 
The writer of the preface, or advertisement, to Llorente's book, 
says : " All the records of the fantastic cruelties of the 
heathen world do not afford so appalling a picture of human 
weakness and depravity as the authentic and genuine documents 
of the laws and proceedings of this Holy Office, which pro- 
fessed to act under the influence of the doctrines of the Re- 
deemer of the World!" And the jurisdiction of this Holy 
OflB.'^.e comprised America ! 

To revert again to the same authority, Llorente : "In 1570 
Philip 11. appointetl an Inquisition in Mexico, and in 1571 
established three tribunals for all America ; one at Lima, one 
in Mexico, and the other at Carthagena, assigning to each the 
extent of territory which they were to possess, and subjecting 
them to the authority of the inquisitor-general and the Supreme 
Council. The first auto-da-fe, in Mexico took place in 1574 | 
it was celebrated with so much pomp and splendour, that eye- 
witnesses have declared that it could only be compared with 
that of Valladolid in 1559, at which Philip II. and the royal 
family attended. A Frenchman and an Englishman were 



146 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

burnt as impenitent Lutherans." In Spain tliere were two 
autos-da-fe, in 1559, against the Lutherans. At the second of 
these thirteen persons were burnt ! 

Can doubt any longer remain in the mind of any American, 
man or Avoman, as to whether we owe respect and gratitude to 
Spain, or to the Scandinavian North ? Is it not entirely due 
to the three great Swedish kings, Gustaf Vasa, Carl IX., and 
Gustaf Adolf, that Spain, "the leader of the Catliolic re- 
action," "the soul and support of the Catholic religion," was 
frustrated in its intention of bringing the whole world under 
Catholic dominion 1, It had made repeated attempts to re- 
establish Catholicism in Sweden, during the reigns of Johan 
III., Carl IX., and during the Swedish-Polish war ; "it was to 
restore the Catholic Church that Philip II. desired to obtain 
the empire of Europe," declares Buckle. This author has very 
clear ideas about Spain and its religioxis history, and would 
educate the world well on this subject, did it but heed ; a few 
brief words of his sum up the record of Philip II.'s work : 
" Directly that he heard that the Protestants were making con- 
verts in Spain, he strained every nerve to stifle the heresy ; and 
so admirably was he seconded by the general temper of the 
people, that he was able without risk to suppress opinions 
which convulsed every other part of Europe. In Sjiain, the 
Keformation, after a short struggle, died completely away, and 
in about ton years the last vestige of it disappeared." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Dui£. i.]/ 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE NORSE DISCOVERERS AND COLUMBUS CONTRASTED. 

Christopher Columbus, " the immortal discoverer of America," 
as D. Gio. Batista Spotorno calls him, and " that great man to 
whom we are indebted for the Ifew World," was the true son 
of his age and his doiible nationality, Italian-Spanish. His 
over-mastering desire to discover a new world was not to get 
away himself from the fetid air of Spain and to secure a 
refuge, at a safe distance from Spain, for hundreds of thousands 
of victims of religious persecution, Ijut to gain new territory for 
the extension of the Gospel and that indispensable appendage 
of the faith, the Inquisition. We never see in any book 
treating of him, or that period, that he was shocked at any of 
the public doings in Spain, or that he was filled with horror at 
the cruelties that M^ere perpetrated there under his very eyes. 
A man of a different mould would rather have been burnt at 
the stake than have been the means of carrying this foul system 
across the ocean, of running the remotest risk of transplanting 
it, but Columbus' dearest Avish was to become the humble 
instrument, in the hands of the Lord, of bringing this added 
glory to the Church and to his sovereigns ! Barry, the Roman 
Catholic author referred to in former chapters of this book, 
laments that " prejudice, enmity, hostility against the Catholic 
Church, have the incredible privilege of teaching the Catholic 
world the life of a man who is one of its most shining glories." 
Yes, he is safe there, that statement will not be contradicted ; 
L 2 



[48 The Icel\ndic Discoverers of America; 



Columbus is indeed one of tlie most shining glories of the 
Catholic world ; it only remains to be seen how he is estimated 
outside of this world. " They cannot bring themselves to see" 
(those prejudiced, hostile biographers he alludes to) " in the dis- 
covery of the New World, a providential intervention." No, 
probably not, with the light that uncorrupted history is now 
throwing upon the transaction ! " They have rejected the 
superior character of Columbus," he adds, " the man chosen by 
heaven." 

In the prospectus of Prof. Eafn's great work, " Antiquitates 
Americanse," there is a declaration to the effect that ^' it was tlie 
knowledge of the Scandinavian voyages, in all probability, 
which prompted the expedition of Columbus." J. H. Schroeder, 
a writer in the Swedish periodical Svea, believed that news 
of the Norse discovery had reached Columbus' ears in Italy ; 
Malte-Brun thought the same, and a number of others. 
Prescott, in his "Ferdinand and Isabella," seems very much 
puzzled about all this, and says in a foot-note : " It is singular 
that Columbus, in his visit to Iceland in 1477, should have 
learned nothing of the Scandinavian voyages to the northern 
shores of America in the tenth and following centuries ; yet, if 
he was acquainted with them, it appears equally surprising that 
he should not have adduced the fact in support of his own 
hypothesis of the existence of land in the west ; and that he 
should have taken a route so different from that of his pre- 
decessors in the path of discovery. It may be, however, as 
M. de Humboldt has well remarked, that the information he 
obtained in Iceland was too vague to suggest the idea that the 
lands thus discovered by the Northmen had any connection 
with the Indies, of which he was in pursuit. In Columbus' 
day, indeed, so little was understood of tlie true position of 
these countries, that Greenland is laid down on the maps in the 
European seas, and as a peninsular })rolongation of Scandinavia." 

The author does not take into sufficient consideration the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 149 

Eoman Catholic talent and propensity for secrecy, especially 
when the secret is likely to pay well. There were a thousand 
reasons to one, to prevent this astute southerner from divulging 
the knowledge he had obtained in Iceland. The princely terms 
he at last made with their majesties of Spain proves that, what- 
ever other lacks there may have been in his character, there 
was none of business shrewdness. Besides the blissful certainty 
he concealed so carefully in his own breast, helped him to bear 
the long period of waiting. He may have had some objection 
to the war with Granada on this score, but that it was carried 
on for the extermination of the Moors did not trouble him. 
Neither would he have scrupled to take the funds for his equip- 
ment on the voyage of discovery, if he had known that they 
were derived directly from confiscated property, as not unlikely 
they had been, as they were furnished by Luis de St. Angel, 
the receiver of the ecclesiastical revenues in Axagon. Columbus 
had his own ideas of right and wrong, and if Queen Isabella 
had happened to complain to him, as it is stated she did to 
others, that " many persons accused her of being influenced in 
all that she did for the tribunal by a desire to seize the wealth 
of the condemned," he would have found a way to console her. 
Columbus, on the whole, was very fortunately placed ; he was 
not one of those pitiable persons who are in advance of their 
age ; he would have been safe even under the dread eyes of 
Torquemada; at a period when 'Hhere was scarcely a man 
celebrated for his learning, who had not been prosecuted as a 
heretic," he was far from likely to reveal a priceless secret for 
the sake of supporting a scientific hypothesis ! No, Columbus 
was not a scientist in a dangerous sense, else the inquisitor- 
general would have put a little obstacle in the way of his voyage 
of discovery. Neither can he be suspected of having read any 
prohibited Lutheran literatuie ; no heresy crops out in him. He 
may have beguiled the tedium of his enforced waiting by 
attending autos-da-fe, as any public-spirited citizen naturally 



ISO The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

would, and he probably saw his share of Lutherans burned, 
ladies included. 

Under all the circumstances, it is a mistake to think that 
Columbus had any very serious obstacles to contend with, aside 
from the prevailing stupidity of the age. To be sure, Prescott 
says that *^*'it cannot be denied that Spain at this period sur- 
passed most of the nations of Christendom in religious en- 
thusiasm, or, to speak more correctly, in bigotry," but Columbus 
was thoroughly in unison with this spirit, and his experience 
should not in the slightest degree be confounded with that of 
thinkers, reformers, scientists, and Lutherans. He had Jesuits 
and high Church officials for friends and counsellors, one of 
them Deza himself, the favour and patronage of the Catholic 
sovereigns, which should be sufficient to save him from ever 
being classed in that condemned category ! 

It was a serious inconvenience, certainly, not to have a ship 
of his own. In the North a gentleman, in those days, had his 
private vessel, as gentlemen, in our times, have their private 
carriage, and could go where he liked ; but in Spain, the in- 
quisitors, who, in a way, represented the Government, could 
only seize and confiscate other people's vessels, like the one 
owned by Burton, an Englishman, whom they burnt as a 
Lutheran. 

The Norse discoverers, on the other iKxnd, were not serious- 
minded lijce Columbus, were not burdened with scientific 
theories, nor a heavy secret, regarded the ocean as little more 
than a babbling brook, and had more vessels and crews than 
they knew what to do with. Like our fashionable Americans 
at the present day, the Norse travellers had been everywhere — 
almost — and pined for a new coast. So one day they found 
Greenland, and soon after chanced upon America. They came 
home and told the news, and then others went. But I will let 
the Saga relate this, in its own inimitable way : " Bjarni, a veiy 
hopeful man. He conceived, when yet young, a desire to travel 



// 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 151 



abroad^ and soon earned for himself both riches and respect ; 
and he was every second winter abroad, every other at home 
with his father. Soon possessed Bjarni his own ship ; and the 
last winter he was in Norway, Herjulf prepared for a voyage 
to Greenland with Eric. . . . T.jarni came to Eyrar with his 
ship the summer of the same year in which his father had 
sailed away in spring. These tidings appeared serious to Ejarni, 
and he was unwilling to unload his ship. Then his seamen 
asked him what he would do ; he answered that he intended 
to continue his custom, and pass the winter with his father." 
In all this we see the cultivated, travelled gentleman, fond also 
of home-life and home-ties. In the rest of his reply, however, 
he quite transcends any gentleman, or any mariner, we have 
heard of: " ^ And I will,' said he, ^ bear for Greenland, if ye 
will give me your company.' " The crew proved quite as re- 
markable as hcj it seemed to be a holiday-trip for the whole of 
them ; far from demurring, they answered, that '' they would 
follow his counsel." Then said Bjarni : " ' Imprudent will appear 
our voyage, since no one of us has been in the Greenland 
ocean.' However, they put to sea as soon as they were ready." 

And this was all there was to it. Money, men, vessel, pro- 
visions, everything needful they had ; the only thing they did 
not have was knowledge of the route, but that was not serious. 
They made about as quick a voyage as if they had known the 
way, and besides their destination (which had been discovered 
before) it is thought that the lands discovered by ]3jarni 
IIerj\dfson on that impromptu trip, gathered from the details 
and minute description of the voyages, were Connecticut, Long 
Island, Ehode Island, Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, and New- 
foundland. 

When poor Columbus, provided with royal promises and 
patronage, large funds, and all that his southern heart could 
wish, returned to Palos, to make immediate preparations for 
his voyage, he found that his difficidties had just bfgun. 



152 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

AVashington living did not mean the description of this to be 
ludicrous, and perhaps it would not be to one who had not 
read of Bjarni's start-off beforehand: "The inhabitants con- 
sidered the ships and crews demanded of them in the light of 
sacrifices devoted to destruction. The o^vners of vessels re- 
fused to furnish them for so desperate a service, and the boldest 
seamen shrunk from such a wild and chimerical cruise into the 
wilderness of the ocean. . . . Nothing can be a stronger evidence 
of the bold nature of this undertaking, than the extreme dread 
with which it was regarded by a maritime community, composed 
of some of the most adventurous navigators of the age." 

This was in 1492, and the Norse party sailed on tlieir little 
pleasure-trip in 982. Does it not seem as if retrogression, and 
not progress, marked the stages of history? As if the Dar- 
Avinian theory was sadly true — in a reverse sense, from man to 
apel The Norse voyagers started off merrily, anticipating 
enjoyment ; the Spaniards in a state of abject terror ; they 
evidently stood in greater dread of a long voyage than of the 
Inquisition, but, to be sure, fire was their favourite element. 
By going on the ocean, also, they were leaving all the peaceful 
and congenial scenes of their native land. When at last, after 
months of delay, they set sail from Palos, a lot of sorry, 
whimpering mourners, they confessed themselves to Juan Perez, 
as a matter of course, partook of the communion, and went 
through a lot of devout and affecting ceremonials, committing 
themselves to the especial guidance and protection of Heaven. 
It is well known that the men behaved as badly as an undis- 
ciplined and mutinous crew could behave, all the way over; 
and when at last one of the seamen saw land, — not the grand 
seignor, Christopher Columbus, who was not born to be in the 
advance-guard, — the incipient admiral coolly swooped off the 
promised reward, and let the poor sailor die of despair. 

They landed with great pomp, as could be supposed. They 
did everything with pomp, those Spaniards, performed all their 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 153 

ante-mortem cremations with pomp, slaughtered with pomp, and 
confiscated and robbed with pomp, in fact, kept up such a 
blaze that the heavenly kingdom could never have been quite 
free from the smoke so continually ascending. Smoke was the 
daily bulletin of their political and religious operations. 
Columbus clad himself as behoved his mixed character of 
admiral, viceroy, devotee, priest, pro tem.j discoverer, and 
crusader ; scarlet, the fire-colour, being conspicuous amid his 
armour; and bearing aloft those symbols that would make 
manifest his allegiance to the twin powers of evil. Church and 
Throne, " his first act, after prayers and thanksgiving, was to 
call upon all present to take the oath of obedience to him as 
admiral and viceroy, representing the persons of the sovereigns." 

If the Norsemen had done anything of this kind they would 
certainly have thought that they had taken leave of their senses. 
This was the superior civilization, the Christian civilization, 
attained by Spain five hundred years afterwards ! 

Bjarni went back to Norway, evidently making the return 
trip with as little difficulty as the one to the new shores, and 
told Erik Jarl about his voyages — the Jarl receiving him well — 
and that he had seen unknown lands. But to resume the 
ncy narrative from the "Codex Flatoiensis " : "People 
thouglit that he had shown no curiosity^ when he had nothing 
to relate about those countries, and this became somewhat of a 
matter of reproach to him. . . . Tliere was now much talk 
about voyages of discovery. Leif, the son of Eric the Red, of 
Brattahlid, went to Bjarni Herjulfson and bought the ship of 
him, and engaged men for it, so that there were thirty-five 
men in all." 

He ivent to Bjarni Herjulfson and bought the ship of him and 
engaged men for it ! But Columbus — Was that Norseman, 
Leif, in the year 984 or 985, in such a savage state as not to 
know that the way to proceed in such a vast undertaking as that 
of crossing the ocean to unknown lands, was to present a petition 



154 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

at court, seeking first the mediation of some high dignitary of 
the Church, — he could have found a stray bishop or two, if he 
had tried, among the early converts, — to make extortionate de- 
mands for himself, in the way of money, commissions, and 
perquisites, and appointments, after having thrown Bjarui over- 
board in the first place 1 But this arrogant and lawless bar- 
barian had money enough of his own, bought a ship off-hand, 
with less concern than a Spaniard, five hundred years afterwards, 
would have bought a plaster image of a saint, did not even 
make known his intentions to the ruling sovereign nor consult 
a priest, but was in all things quite sufficient unto himself. To 
continue the narrative : " Now prepared they their ship, and 
sailed out into the sea when they were ready" — without con- 
fessing themselves, or partaking of the communion, or going 
through devout and affecting ceremonials, or committing them- 
selves to the especial guidance and protection of Heaveli, the 
godless pagans ! — " and then found that land first which Bjarni 
had found last." They went ashore and explored. After that 
they sailed out to sea and found another land, and went ashore 
there, too, touching in turn Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nan- 
tucket. Then they shaped their course through Nantucket Bay, 
beyond the south-western extremity of Cape Cod ; thence across 
the mouth of Buzzard's Bay to Seaconnct Passage, and up the 
Pocasset Kiver to Mount Hope Bay. " After this took they 
counsel, and formed, the resolution of remaining there for the 
winter, and built three largo houses. . . . But when they had 
done with the house-building, Leif said to his comrades" — 
{comrades? Columbus had no comrades; he took the oath of 
allegiance from a servile crew !) — " ' Now will I divide our men 
into two parts and have the land explored.' . . . Leif wns a 
great and strong man, grave and well-favoured, therewith 
sensible and moderate in all things. . . . And Leif gave the land 
a name after its qualities and called it Vinland." (Hence also 
the modern name of Martha's Vineyard.) 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 155 

As one of their experiences, they happened to come to some 
men on a rock out at sea ; as it turned out they were the ship- 
wrecked Icelanders, Thorer and his wife Gudrid, who had been 
in quest of the same new shores. Not knowing who they were, 
however, Leif showed his customary good sense and kindness of 
heart. " ' Now let us,' said Leif, ' hold our wind, so that we come 
up to them, if they should want our assistance, and the necessity 
demands that we should help them ; and if they should not be 
kindly disposeJ, the power is in our hands and not in theirs.' " 

How diiferent would have been the Spanish mode of pro- 
cedure had one of Columbus' vessels stumbled upon a lot of 
strange men on a rock ! We can see, in imagination, the frantic 
ejaculations, hear the pious cry, " Holy Virgin, protect us ! " and 
gathering courage from seeing the defenceless condition of the 
poor ship-wrecked wretches, the Spaniards would probably have 
rushed upon them and massacred them in a body, and found 
out afterwards that they were countrymen of theirs ! However, 
a few deaths, more or less, do not count. 

"JSTow there was much talk about Leif's voyage to Vinland, 
and Thorvald, his brother, thought that the land had been 
much too little explored. Then said Leif to Thorvald : ' Thou 
canst go with my ship, brother ! if thou wilt, to Vinland.' , , . 
Now Thorvald made ready for this voyage, with thirty men, 
ftnd took counsel thereon with Leif, his brother. Then made 
ihey their ship ready and put to sea, and nothing is told of their 
voyage until they came to Leif's booths in Vinland. There they 
kid up their ship and spent a pleasant Avinter, and caught fish 
for their support." 

In the summer they explored the land, the western part of 
it, and the following summer they went eastward. Comparing 
Columbus with the Norse voyagers, Aaron Goodrich cites an 
incident in Thorvald's experience, to illustrate the different 
characteristics of the two ; " Attacked by hostile Indians, Thor- 
vald says : ' We shall defend ourselves as well as we can, but not 



156 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

use our weapons much against them.' Greeted by peaceable 
Indians, Columbus orders the ship's gun fired in the midst, in 
order ' to abate their pride and make them not contemn the 
Christians.' " He says also, as the narrative has already told 
us, that " all the Norse leaders, Bjarne Herjulfson, Leif and 
Thorvald Ericson, Karlsefne, Bjarne Grimolfson, worked for the 
common good, and were as much loved and respected by their 
followers as Columbus was hated and despised by his." 

Goodrich also draws a just comparison in regard to the extent 
of exploration of each party, and says : " If the discovery by 
Columbus in 1492 of the islands of San Salvador and San 
Domingo was the discovery of the continent of America, then 
the discovery and permanent colonization of Iceland and Green- 
land, six hundred years before by the Scandinavians, was also 
the discovery of that continent ; the portion of mainland 
coasted by Columbus was avowedly but small, and he professed 
to be in Asia. The Northmen, on the contrary, visited all the 
eastern coast of America, from the extreme north to Florida, 
formed settlements, and for centuries carried on commerce with 
the products of what are now the most civilized, populous and 
enlightened portions of America ; and the American might well 
feel relief and pride at the knowledge that the first of his race 
to touch upon his native shores were the heroic Norsemen — 

' Kings of the main, their leaders brave, 
Their barks the dragons of the wave.' " 

Tonlmin Smith, in his " Discovery of America by the North- 
men," argues each point, and seems to have chosen the dialogue 
form for his book in order to debate every inch of ground with 
the defenders of Columbus. He dissects Bancroft's entire state- 
ment relative to both in the most scathing way. His summing 
up is this : " Columbus was not the discoverer of America ; he 
was not the first visitant to her shores ; his act was not so 
perilous, or complete, or adventurous a one as the oft-repeated 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 157 

acts of the Northmen ; nor was his actual knowledge of the 
country in any degree so exact, while all his ideas concerning it 
were purely erroneous. . . . Shall the ISTorthmen be deprived, 
then, of the well-deserved meed of honour and glory which is 
so justly due to them, for their bold and enterprising achieve- 
ments, for their often-repeated explorations, and for their early 
but accurate knowledge of these distant regions ? " 

Happy for Columbus if he could be let off with a comparison 
with the discoverers and colonists, Bjarni, Leif, and Thorvald, 
but there is still another distinguished Norseman, whose bio- 
graphy and character belittle the inglorious Italian fortune- 
hunter still more, and this man is Thorfinn Karlsefne. Illus- 
trious, influential, possessing immense wealth and a lineage so 
splendid as only to be equalled by his celebrated line of 
descendants, Karlsefne was a truly remarkable man, and him 
must the American people honour as their first worthy colonist. 
" Snorre, his son, was born in Vinland, a.d 1007. From him, 
according to a genealogical table " (affirms E. F. Slafter) 
" introduced into ' Antiquitates Americanae ' by Prof. Eafn, are 
lineally descended a large number of distinguished Scandinavians. 
Among them we note the following : Snorre Sturleson, the 
celebrated historian, born 1178; Bertel Thorvaldson, the 
eminent sculptor, born 1770 ; Finn Magnusen, born 1781 ; 
Birgin Thorlacius, professor in Copenhagen, born 1775 ; Grim 
Thorkelin, professor in Copenhagen and many others earlier 
in the line." In a note, in this edition of the Norse voyages, 
published by the Prince Society, it is stated that '^ it would 
appear that Karlsefne himself narrated originally the events that 
occurred on these voyages, and that only the more important 
portions were written out by the sagaman ; that it was not 
written till a numerous race of distinguished men had descended 
from Karlsefne." 

" Thorfinn took to trading voyages," says the narrative^ " and 
was thought an able seaman and merchant. . . . One summer 



158 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

Karlsefne fitted out his sliip^ and purposed a voyage to Viuland." 
And now follows an example of the lavish hospitality of the 
Norsemen, showing the grand scale upon which they exercised 
it : " Leif, on his side, showed them hospitality, and bade the 
crews of these two ships home, for the winter, to his own house 
at Brattahlid. This the merchants accepted and thanked him. 
Thai were their goods removed to Brattahlid; there was no 
want of large out-houses to keep the goods in, neither plenty of 
everything that was required, wherefore they were well satisfied 
in the winter. But towards Yule " — the Norse uul which the 
Church appropriated and converted into the Christian Christ- 
mas, a season of extreme festivity in the North, devoid of 
tedious religious ceremonies — " Leif began to be silent, and was 
less cheerful than he used to be. One time Karlsefne turned 
towards Leif and said : ' Hast thou any sorrow, Leif, my friend ? 
People think to see that thou art less cheerful than thou wert 
wont to be ; thou hast entertained us with the greatest splendour, 
and we are bound to return it to thee with such services as we 
can command ; say now, what troubles thee ? ' Leif answered : 
' Ye are friendly and thankful, and I have no fear as concerns 
our intercourse, that ye will feel the want of attention ; but, on 
the other hand, I fear that when ye come elsewhere it will be 
said that ye have never passed a worse Yule than that which 
now approaches.' " With the aid of the resources on Thorfinn's 
two vessels, freely offered for his host's use, the joyful holidays 
could be duly kept, and Thorer having died, some time since, 
the occasion was rendered yet more festive by the wedding of 
Thorfinn and Gudrid, Thorer's widow. 

And notwithstanding the extensive explorations that had been 
made, ''in Brattahlid," says the narrative, ''began people to 
talk much about, that Vinland the Good should be explored." 

Columbus could not give up his time to exploration, in the 
strict sense of the word, for he was engaged in gold- hunting and 
pondering how to turn his discovery to speedy account. The 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 159 



Norsemen, as Goodrich clearly demonstrates, '' were actuated 
by motives far different from those of Columbus ; they did not 
come in search of gold or slaves, but to gather by industry the 
natural products of the land, carrying on therewith a flourishing 
trade between the continent, Greenland, Iceland, and Norway." 
He adds his testimony also to the fact of the prevailing 
ignorance in Europe, by stating that *'*' letters and learning 
flourished in Iceland when the rest of Europe was intellectually 
stagnant ; histories and annals are therefore copious." 

The Norsemen manifestly had a gift for navigating, exploring, 
and colonizing, while Columbus, better fitted for an ecclesiastical 
calling or for a crusader, and with mind distraught by visions of 
the holy sepulchre, which he was some time to recover, after he 
had found his gold-mine, proceeded laboriously and with infinite 
difficulty. What made the Norsemen such skilful and daring 
navigators it is superfluous to state, but as Laing very wittily 
observes : " Ferocity, ignorance, and courage will not bring men 
across the ocean." History does not relate to us for our malicious 
gratification what were Columbus' reflections, in Iceland, when 
reading of these Norse voyages, or rather he did not commit his 
bitter and envious thoughts to writing, but the anecdote Laing 
repeats about Charlemagne will serve very well to indicate what 
he must have felt at the bare mention of their bold doings, no 
doubt recounted to him with Icelandic enthusiasm and national 
pride. This is the story of the French proselyter : " Historians 
te us that when Charlemagne, in the ninth century, saw some 
piratical vessels of the Northmen cruising at a distance in the 
Mediterranean, to which they had for the first time found their 
way, that he turned away from the window and burst into tears. 
Was it the barbarism of these pirates, or their civilization, their 
comparative superiority in the art of navigation, and of all be- 
longing to it that moved him ? None of the countries under his 
sway, none of the Christian populations of Europe in the seventh, 
eighth, or ninth centuries, had ships and men capable of such a 



i6o The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

voyage. The comparative state of shipbuilding and navigation, 
in two countries with sea-coasts, is a better test of their com- 
parative civilization and advance in all the useful arts than that 
of their church-building." 

But this was the superiority of contemporaries ! What if 
Charlemagne with his over-sensitive self-love, had been trans- 
ferred to Columbus' age and been compelled to acknowledge, 
if even in his secret soul, the superior civilization, and the 
superiority in the art of navigation of a race of ferocious, bar- 
barous, Christian-hating pagans, who had lived half a millenary 
before 1 This would have been the refinement of suffering to 
Columbus, if he had been intelligent enough to perceive it ; 
but he was not. A wise man, with some little knowledge of his 
own incapacity, would have forsworn navigation, after studying 
those documents in Iceland ; but Columbus persisted, missed the 
route and still persisted, and knew nothing of geography till 
the day of his death. 

It must also have annoyed Charlemagne excessively to know 
that democracy was carried to such an extent in the N'orth, that 
every ambitious leader could have his own vessel ! Laing calls 
attention to this, with the rest : '^ It is to be observed also that 
the ships of the Northmen in those ages did not belong to the 
king, or to the Stale, but to private adventurers and peasants, 
and were fitted out by them." If Columbus had read in the 
Sagor that " Bjaini possessed his own ship," and that Leif, when 
he made up his mind to start on a voyage of discovery, " bought 
the ship of him and engaged men for it," without any pother or 
delay, the recollection of these two little facts could not have 
sweetened his own fourteen years of waiting for funds, vessels, 
and royal patronage. 

It is no exaggeration for Wheaton to say of the men of the 
North : " Their familiarity with the perils of the ocean, and with 
the diversified manners and customs of foreign lands, stamped 
their national character with bold and original features, which 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due, i6i 



distinguished them from every other people." But little did 
these men dream, with all their proud ambition, that the classic 
antiquity they created in the North would yet stand forth, 
one thousand years afterwards, as the scene of extinct virtues 
and traits, of acts so bold and original, that no subsequent race 
has ever attempted to repeat them, and that have always been 
regarded as little short of fabulous ! 

Still, Columbus made a suflficiently good use of his time and 
opportunities to be able to return to Spain in the guise of a 
great discoverer and magnate, and in Las Casas' description of 
his reception at Barcelona, we are told that " a modest smile 
lighted up his features, showing that he enjoyed the state and 
glory in which he came." His situation, for all that, w^as 
precarious ; he had excited rather too much sordid expectation 
in a court and a land Avhose insatiate cry was ever gold, souls ! 
gold, souls ! So one day, after his return to the New World, 
he wrote a letter to their majesties in Spain, from which a 
paragraph has already been quoted in this book ; even Irving 
disapproves of this letter and the suggestions it contains, and 
comments thus : '' Among the many sound and salutary sugges- 
tions in this letter, there is one of a most pernicious tendency, 
written in that mistaken view of natural rights prevalent at the 
day, but fruitful of so much wrong and misery in the world. 
Considering that the greater the number of these cannibal 
pagans transferred to the Catholic soil of Spain, the greater 
would be the number of souls put in the way of salvation, he 
proposed to establish an exchange of them as slaves, against 
live stock, to be furnished by merchants to the colony. The 
ships to bring such stock were to be landed nowhere but at the 
island of Isabella, where the Carib captives would be ready for 
delivery. A duty was to be levied on each slave for the benefit 
of the royal revenue. In this way the colony would be furnished 
with all kinds of live stock free of expense ; the peaceful islands 
would be freed from warlike and inhuman neighbours; the 



i62 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

royal treasury would be greatly enriched, and a vast number of 
souls would be snatched from perdition, and carried, as it were, 
by main force to heaven." 

So much for the suggestion, the details of the plan ; but it 
did not stop at that; Irving goes on to say: "In his eagerness 
to produce immediate profit, and to indemnify the sovereigns 
for those expenses which bore hard upon the royal treasury, he 
sent, likewise, about five hundred Indian prisoners, who, he 
suggested, might be sold as slaves at Seville. It is painful to 
find the brilliant renown of Columbus sullied by so foul a stain, 
and the glory of his enterprises degraded by such flagrant 
violations of liumanity." 

If Irving had taken the pains to read the narratives of the 
Norse voyages, and to ascertain the merits of the case, he would 
have turned his sympathies into a nobler channel, and spared 
himself the pain of being shocked at anything that Columbus 
said or did. With such a key to the character of the man as 
that yielded by the Iceland episode, in 1477, this based upon 
Columbus' anticipation of what he would obtain at Iceland, 
Irving would have realized that nothing could sully a character 
so uniformly bad and unprincipled as the one he made the 
subject of his biography. His wicked work was continued, 
for in 1496 Don Bartholomew Columbus sent three hundred 
slaves to Spain, from Hispaniola; in course of time Indian 
slavery was varied with Airican, and "in 1552," as stated in 
Arthur Helps' '^ Spanish Conquest in America," " Philip the 
Si'cond concluded a bargain for the grant of a monopoly to 
import 23,000 negroes into the Indies ; and so this traffic went 
on until the great assiento of 1713, between the English and 
the Spanish Governments was concluded, respecting the 
importation of negroes into Spanish America. The number 
of negroes imported into America from the year 1517, 
when the trade was first permitted by Charles V., to 1807, the 
year in wliich the British Parliament passed the act abolish- 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 163 

ing the slave-trade, cannot be estimated at less than five or six 
millions." 

The present age, as little as the past, owes gratitude to 
Columbus; praise is not due to him for anything that he did, 
while the blame is too heavy to be dealt adequately. Better 
than to waste valuable time in contemplating this deeply cul- 
pable and bigoted man, would be to con ?.gn both him and the 
miserable country that fostered his dishonest purposes, to a 
swift forgetfulness. We have that with which we can profitably 
occupy our thoughts : the deeds of our own indomitable 
ancestors ! 

Daniel Wilson, in his " Prehistoric Man," before adding the 
weiglit of his testimony also to the truth of the N'orse discovery 
of America, aptly cites these words of the great Niebuhr: ''He 
who calls what has vanished back into being enjoys a bliss like 
that of creating." This is the glad duty of the American Eepublic, 
to call the grand Scandinavian antiquity back into being, and to 
continue the progress started so nobly in the pagan JSTorth, as 
if there had been no intermission, caused by the ''anti- 
naturalists" of Southern Europe, for one thousand years ! Let 
us continue where they left off ; we shall not find much of value 
in the intervening ages ; we shall only see Spain's foul autograph 
scrawled on every fair nation in Europe, except the Northern 
ones, and on half the American continent ! 

The paragraph of Daniel Wilson's referred to is this: " From 
the appearance of the ' Antiquitates Americanse,' accordingly, 
may be dated the systematic resolve of American antiquaries 
and historians to find evidence of intercourse with the ancient 
world prior to that recent year of the fifteenth century in which 
the ocean revealed its great secret to Columbus. From the 
literary memorials of the Norsemen, thus brought to light, we 
glean suflficient evidence to place beyond doubt not only the 
discovery and colonization of Greenland, by Eric the Red — 
apparently in the year 985 — but also the exploration of more 
M 2 



i64 Thk Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

southern lands, some of which, we can scarcely doubt, must 
have formed part of the American continent. Of the authenticity 
of the manuscripts from whence these narratives are derived 
there is not the slightest room for question." 

This chapter would not be complete without the words of 
Hubert Howe Bancroft on this all-important question: "Mr. 
B. F. de Costa, in a carefully studied monograph on the subject^ 
assures us that there can be no doubt as to their authenticity, 
and I am strongly inclined to agree with him. It is true that 
no less eminent authors than George Bancroft and Washington 
Irving have expressed opinions in opposition to De Costa's 
views, but it must be remembered that neither of these dis- 
tinguished gentlemen made a very profound study of the Ice- 
landic Sagas, indeed Irving directly states that he ' has not had 
the means of tracing this story to its original sources ;' nor must 
we forget that neither the author of the ' Life of Columbus,' 
nor he of the ' History of the Colonization of the United States,' 
could be expected to willingly strip the laurels from the brow 
of his familiar hero, Christopher Columbus, and concede the 
honour of the ' first discovery ' to the Northern sea-kings, whose 
exploits are so vaguely recorded." 

It is the office of the American people, as a nation, to strip 
these laurels from the brow of a man made great by a glory 
he stole 1 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 165 



CHAPTEK IX. 

THE BENEFICIAL RESULTS TO THE PRESENT AGE AND POSTERITY 
OP ATTRIBUTING THIS MOMENTOUS DISCOVERY TO THE TRUE 



Had the vast literature of Iceland preserved in the retentive 
and faithful memories of its scalds and sagamen, the annals of 
what was in many respects an ideal civilization, describing the 
life of a race mentally and physically sound, whose thoughts, 
words and acta were strong and vigorous — had this literature 
existed in a written or printed form, in any tangible form, at 
the introduction of Christianity in the North, it would un- 
doubtedly have shared the fate of the pagan literature of other 
countries. The destruction of immense quantities of the works 
of Grecian and Roman anti-Christian writers signalized the impo- 
sition of this faith in the Roman empire, and the destruction of 
temples and images, of all relics of the Odin and Thor worship 
in Scandinavia, is a sufficient indication of the fate that would 
have befallen books and manuscripts, had there been any for 
the priests and bishops to lay hands on. But, to the supreme 
good fortune of future generations, this was preserved where 
the Christian desecrators could not enter, it was safely guarded 
behind spiritual bolts and bars, in the faithful and reverent 
minds of the people, and long after, not much before the seven- 
teenth century, when the nations of Europe, after the first 
decisive revolt represented in the Reformation, had begun to 
recover from the asphyxia into which the unnatuial and pre- 



i66 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

posterous doctrines of tlie Christian religion had thrown them, 
Icelandic history was made known to them, the revelation of a 
s^'stem of ethics, of a moral code, of political and social regu- 
lations and customs so unlike those which Christian Europe 
had adopted and lived after, that it could not at first produce 
anything but astonishment and very partial understanding. 
Had any one realized then that this history of an enliglitened 
past threatened the existence of the unenlightened condition in 
which the modern world was sunk, there would have been an 
effort made to suppress these writings as soon as they appeared. 
As it was, the public, and the guardians of the public Aveal, 
were too enervated to realize the moral force contained in the 
Sagas, and too secure in the belief that the Christian religion 
Avould endure for all time, and was really impervious to assault, 
to take any precautions. 

Although the reader has again and again been asked to con- 
sider the great value and importance of this ancient literature, 
there are still some opinions in regard to it that must not be 
overlooked. Beamish, referring to Iceland, has said: "There 
the unerring memories of the scalds and sagamen were the 
depositories of past events, which, handed down from age to 
age, in one unbroken line of historical tradition, were committed 
to writing on the introduction of Christianity (a.d. 1000), and 
now come before us with an internal evidence of their truth 
which places them among the highest order of historic records." 
In an address before the Historical Society of Ehode Island on 
the visits of the Northmen to that state, Alexander Farnum 
uttered words that will have much weight with Americans: 
" At first sight it seems a remarkable circumstance that nine 
centuries ago, when the literature of continental Europe presents 
so little of value or interest, we should find on the remote, in- 
liospi table shores of Iceland a body of men who carefully 
studied the past and closely observed the present, and whose 
recollections when, committed to record on the introduction of 



OR, Honour to whom Honour ts Due. 167 

Christianity and the art of writing became at once an historical 
literature such as hardly any contemporary nation of Europe 
could rival." William Cullen Bryant says: " These sagas were 
reduced to writing by diligent and studious men ; inestimable 
treasures laid up for the use of future historians." 

But the noblest tribute of all is that from Professor W. Fiske, 
called by Samuel Kneeland "the most learned cultivator of 
these Northern languages in this country :" " It (the old Icelandic 
literature) deserves the careful study of every student of letters. 
For the English-speaking races, especially, there is nowhere, so 
near home, a field promising to the scholar so rich a harvest. 
The few translations, or attempted translations, which are to be 
found in English, give merely a faint idea of the treasures of 
antique wisdom and sublime poetry which exist in the Eddie 
lays, or ' of the quaint simplicity, dramatic action, and striking 
realism which characterize the historical sagas." To strengthen 
the testimony still more, I cite B. F. De Costa : *' Yet while 
other nations were without a literature, the intellect of Iceland 
was in active exercise, and works were produced like the Eddas 
and Hoimskringla, works, which, being inspired by a lofty 
genius, will rank with the writings of Homer and Herodotus." 
The Howitts even assert that " the Icelandic poems have no 
parallel in all the treasures of ancient literature ; they are the 
expressions of the souls of poets existing in the primeval and 
uneffcminated earth. The Edda is a structure of that grandeur 
and importance, that it deserves to be far better known to us 
than it is. The spirit in it is sublime and colossal," 

In the sentence, " they are the expressions of the souls of 
];oets existing in the xmmeval and uneffeminated earth" the 
pith of the whole matter is reached. The sagas, whether 
poetical or prose, do indeed relate of a life diametrically opposite 
from that of which we are now cognisant ; of an earth which 
some cause has essentially changed. These poets, and all who 
formed the chief characters in the Northern epics, had a different 



1 68 Tpie Icelandic Discoverers of America; 



ideal from that of the rest of Europe; their standard was not 
the idealization of suffering, but the conquest of suffering, that 
IS, of all the weakness, sickliness, depravity, moral feebleness 
and evil of all kinds that produce it ; all this the pagans of the 
Is^orth crushed out as pertinaciously as it was engendered by 
the Christian communities in which suffering was the only ideal. 
The Norsemen believed that human nature was good, capable 
of whatever the individual in his highest pride might wiU • the 
Eomanists believed that human nature was evil, and that the 
will was the worst snare ; to one class the earth was a perfectly 
satisfactory field of activity, which could be rendered all that 
man could wish, to the other a den of misery, hopeless from the 
beginning. 

The value of this literature, this history of the North, which 
from all accounts seems to be the only reliable history we have, 
is that it describes, with that graphic force yielded by truth 
alone, a state of society founded on natural principles. At this 
late hour the people of the nineteenth century are beginning to 
yield some slight reverence to nature, and depute science to tell 
them what nature is. What little has been learned regarding 
the physical laws has scarcely extended as yet to the domain of 
moral and spiritual laws ; an entrance has been forced to the 
one, but the Church, as of old, forbids access to the other 
The race moulded and fashioned by the Bible, wlio are aching 
in every limb from the cramp it has caused, have the inesti° 
mable privilege of reading of a race who had no Bible to warp 
them out of all human shape, and who were as they were 
created to be. The conclusion is unavoidable that the people 
of the North were so totally unlike any other nation because 
they were wholly untinctured with Christianity; thence their 
strength of character, their intrepidity, their marked indi- 
viduality, the large results consequent upon their every act. 
Mr. Bryant remarks, half humorously: "The Northmen had 
a genius for discovering new countries by accident," and they 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due, 169 

really did accomplish more, even in other directions, by mere 
chance, than others accomplished by the most painful efforts, 
proving Emerson's words that " it is as easy for the strong man 
to be strong, as for the weak to be weak." The nature that 
they had never defied or insulted was their constant ally. 

But the two elements could not live conjoined in Europe ; 
one or the other had to go under. Christianity, the prostitu- 
tion of nature, won the victory over the natural life, and the 
North, too, finally accepted the teachings that pronounce man 
vile. From that hour the darkness settled swiftly over all 
Europe and the Middle Ages chronicled the complete sway of 
the Church. The Scandinavian nations had at last been re- 
deemed from barbarism. To this triumph of the Church we 
are told that we are to ascribe the blessings of modern civiliza- 
tion ; indeed this is the prevailing theory. It is this crazy 
theory which the Icelandic history, treasured up for this pre- 
sent age, is to dispel, its province being to rectify an error in 
which the European race have lived for eighteen hundred years 
and to which they still stubbornly cling. The extinction of 
Northern paganism, so-called, but more properly of Northern 
irreligion, ought to have demonstrated clearly that under the 
shadow of Christianity nothing else could live; it affiliates 
with nothing else, and never can. 

Felix Oswald shows very forcibly this lack of homogeneity 
between Christianity and that which is alleged to be insepar- 
able from it : " But in examining the claims of these theorists," 
he says, " the impartial inquirer cannot overlook the following 
objections: 1. That the rise of the Christian faith coincides 
with the sunset of the great South- European civilization ; 
2. That the zenith of its power coincides with the midnight of 
mediaeval barbarism ; 3. That the decline of its influence 
coincides with the sunrise of a North-European civilization ; 
4. That all the principal victories of Freedom and Science 
have been achieved in spite of the Church, in spite of her utmost 



\yo Tjie Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

efforts to thwart or diminish their triumph, that only in conse- 
quence of the futility of these efforts the heresies of one age have 
become the truisms of the next, so that Christianity has always 
marched in the rear of civilization ; 5. That the exponents of the 
Christian dogmas persist in their hostility to the progress of a 
reform which they recognize only by condescending to share 
the fruits of its former victories ; 6. That the worst enemies of 
political and intellectual liberty were firm believers in the 
dogmas of the New Testament, while the direct or indirect re- 
pudiation of those dogmas has been the fundamental tenet of 
nearly every great thinker, scholar or statesmen, till the degree 
of Protestantism has become the chief test of intellectual 
sanity; 7. That among the contemporary nations of the Chris- 
tian world, the most sceptical are the most civilized, while the 
most orthodox are the most backward in freedom, industry 
and general intelligence," 

These are objections which Christian believers do not 
attempt to explain away ; their only strength lies in ignoring 
facts and in maintaining their assertions in the face of truth. 
If we look back across the black chasm of the Middle Ages, 
we see an uncontaminated soil, up there in the North, on which 
were no prisons, brothels, houses of correction, churches, 
charitable institutions or court-houses ; and in Iceland, where 
the brightness concentrated, a state of society in which free- 
dom, happiness and prosperity were not postponed till the 
millennium. How was it possible for Iceland to preserve the 
proudest national position on record for four hundred years, to 
become the model of a republic, and almost the sole intellec- 
tual repository in Europe ? How was it possil^le for this remote 
and desolate island to conserve so much moral force, so much of 
the essence of its own transcendent power and genius, as to 
revive the flagging energies of the modern world and reveal to 
it the long road of its stupid and imbecile retrogression, every 
step of which must be retraced, until the stragglers get back to 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 171 

first principles 1 And why cannot the American Republic, 
with its brilliant opportunities, reach the same moral and in- 
tellectual height that the Republic of Iceland attained one 
thousand years ago 1 The fault does not lie with Americans, 
with their Government or their Constitution, but in the in- 
sidious evil wrought by the Christian emissaries in their midst. 
If they had made the whole structure of society secular, as 
well as their Constitution, reduced Sunday to the level of 
other days, the Bible to the level of other books, churches and 
cathedrals to the level of other buildings, unconsecrated, and 
allowed to be used only for useful purposes, priests and clergy- 
men to the level of other men, nay, below that, to the level of 
idlers and beneficiaries, who, pursuing no useful calling, live on 
the community and impoverish it, the nation would have made 
enormous progress, and history could again have recorded the 
almost fabulous deeds of indomitable and grandly ambitious 
men ! As it is, all the vices and abominations of Europe have 
been transplanted there ; in American cities are to be seen the 
pomp and mummery of cathedral service, the squalor of tlie 
worst poverty, the brazen infamy of the lowest crime and de- 
pravity, just as ill Europe. Is it because the Constitution 
of the United States has germinated the same evils as Russian, 
or Spanish, or German, or English monarchy ? Is it because 
" human nature is the same, all over the world," as those who 
despise it are fond of saying 1 Or is it because the Church 
germinates the same evils everywhere, under a republic or 
under a monarchy, because the Church produces a certain species 
of human nature, which chokes out all others, and thus gives a 
certain show of truth to the trite saying that human nature is 
the same, all over the world, for the people of the United 
States have given the Christian idolaters full freedom to carry 
on their work. The Christian nature is undoubtedly the same 
all over the world : hypocritical, canting, secretive, avaricious, 
deeply designing and Machiavellian ; each leader makes a tool 



1/2 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

and dupe of his followers ; congregations do their priest's or 
minister's bidding, and the whole society is permeated with their 
spirit and purpose. We do not know what human nature 
is ; we have not seen it ; we have only seen the regeneration 
effected by the Cliurch. We can read about it, however, in 
the old Norse sagas, and in some blessed hour this will rouse 
the desire in all who read to become human and natural again, 
to shake off this palsying superstition that has benumbed heart 
and mind for so many ages. Listening to the twaddle of the 
priests and Bible interpreters, we had almost forgotten that we 
possessed any capabilities akin to those of the Icelandic re- 
publicans of the olden time. 

When will it become possible for Americans to do away with 
church-taxation, with religious holidays and fasts, with penal 
servitude, with poverty, with prostitution, with unhappy 
marriages, with the life-long misery of nine-tenths of those 
born to the earth ? Hospitality, but one of the many virtues of 
the Norsemen, in and of itself did much to prevent poverty 
and at all events prevented any one from dying of starvation. 
But hospitality, in the broad sense understood by the Norse- 
men, is despised by their English and American descendants, 
in fact by all civilized nations. In speaking of the hospitality 
everywhere shown by the natives of the islands he visited to 
Columbus, Irving observes : " The untutored savage, in almost 
every part of the world, scorns to make a traffic of hospitality." 
This traffic, together with the slave-traffic, the woman- 
traffic, the soul-traffic, was introduced by Christianity ; every- 
thing must be bought and paid for, from bread to absolution. 
Human beings had no rights ; whatever blessings they enjoyed 
were by grace ; food and shelter were costly luxuries, to be 
earned, never to be given. If a little hungry boy steals a 
loaf of bread. Christian England sends him to gaol and con- 
demns him to a month of hard labour. Famishing adults, in 
Europe or America, can only get food on credit if their 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 173 

promise to pay is good. In Iceland, even at the present day, 
there is said to be only one prison, a good, strong one, Lut 
with no one in it. There are no inns, and hospitality is the 
custom. But the other nations allow the Icelanders to starve, 
in case of famine. 

Samuel Kneeland, in his exceedingly interesting hook, " An 
American in Iceland," describing the visit of a party of 
Americans to this famous island at the time of the Millennial 
celebration, says that there is a remarkable revival of the old 
Icelandic literary spirit in the present century, as exhibited by 
their poets, historians, linguists and journalists. " The present 
mental cultivation of the people," he affirms, " is very high. 
. . . The common people are well acquainted with their own 
and other national histories, ancient and modern ; they know 
all about the early discovery of America by the Northmen, 
five centuries before Columbus, while very few of us, until 
recently, knew any more of Iceland than we did of the South 
Pole, or the wilds of Africa." 

After bestowing many encomiums upon these proud, in- 
dependent people, who he declares are " born republicans," 
he says : *^ And now I trust that the reader will admit that 
Iceland was justified in proclaiming to the nations the celeljra- 
tion'of her one thousandth anniversary ; that she deserves the 
admiration of the civilized world for what she has done fur 
liberty, the advance of knowledge, and the preservation of 
historic records, at a time when the rest of Europe was in 
darkness ; and especially that she has proved that man is 
superior to his surroundings, and that hardship, oppression and 
poverty can neither stifle the aspirations for liberty, nor degrade 
a poetic and heroic race." 

" Hardship, oppression and poverty " have been the more 
modern experience of Iceland, coming with the Christian dis- 
pensation. It was not poor emigrants tliat first sought her 
shores, nor those belonging to the common people. A bleak 



174 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

and sterile land could never induce what Christianity and sub- 
jection to the throne of Norway induced almost immediately. 
In Pigott's mention of this fact that in 1262 Iceland was 
united to the crown of Norway, the pregnant sentence follows, 
already quoted : " But all interest in public affairs thence- 
forth died away, and no Sagas were written^ because there was 
nothing to write about." This was the case all over Europe ; 
there was really nothing to write about until the " revival of 
letters " in the seventeenth century. " In Europe generally," as 
Buckle states, " the seventeenth century was distinguished by the 
rise of a secular literature in which ecclesiastical theories were 
disregarded." By a ludicrous coincidence, remarked upon by 
several Swedish authors, St. Birgitta was the first person to make 
Sweden known, in modern times, and Gustaf Vasa, the second. 
The worthy woman mercifully freed Sweden from her presence 
alid went to Rome, to seek a broader field of activity ; while 
Gustaf Vasa obliterated her work, in Vadstena, and in Sweden 
generally, and cleared the land thenceforth of all saints. But 
previous to this, all three of the Scandinavian nations, as well 
as Iceland, had sunk into a decline ; there had been five 
hundred years of Roman delirium ; pageants, pilgrimages, 
baptismal rites, miracles, saint- worship, throughout the North, 
but in a somewhat modified form : religious zeal and fanaticism 
could never run quite to the same excess there as in Southern 
Europe, but yet Gustaf Vasa rose in opposition none too soon. 
As it was, silly, superstitious legends superseded the Sagas^ and 
slinking, black -gowned monks trod Norse soil. The splendid 
realities which only began to pale toward the year 1000, had 
become fabulous things of the past, bearing so little resem- 
blance to existing conditions, that they were even more dis- 
credited then than now. Only in thld present decade is there 
sufficient understanding, in a few chosen minds, to appreciate 
properly the ancient life of the North, and sufficient courage to 
dare to state to the world the cause of the long blight and 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 175 

the remedy provided in the knowledge Iceland so generously 
yields. 

Were it not for the recuperative power of nature, always 
savouring of the miraculous, there would be little hope of the 
recovery of the human race from eighteen hundred years of 
Christianity. As Dr. Oswald says, and his w^ords cannot be too 
often repeated : " The night of the Middle Ages was not the 
natural blindness of unenlightened barbarians, but an unnatural 
darkness, maintained by an elaborate system of spiritual des- 
potism, and in spite of the fierce struggles of many light-loving 
nations." To this is due our mixed ideas of right and wrong, 
our confusion when we are forced to any moral step, our de- 
pendence on authorities, our vacillation, our utter lack of self- 
reliance. Pride is not in a man's own conscious sense of worth, 
of honour, of bravery, but in externals ; money is his glory and 
defence. He cannot trust himself, nor, from his knowledge of 
himself, is he inclined to trust or love others. What reason has 
he to suppose them any better than himself 1 Policy rules him, 
why should it not rule them 1 He has his master, and he knows 
it ; the Church owns him ; with the little remaining intelli- 
gence he possesses he knows that the Church owns all, except 
the unbelievers, and these are dangerous company. Even if 
the truth is with these persons, which he is not quite clear- 
headed enough to decide — and after all is there any such thing 
as truth 1 — he is not willing to relinquish the benefits the Church 
doles out to him for the sake of any fanatical notions of 
following one's convictions. 

Max Nordau, in his "Conventional Modern Lies," describes 
this mental state well : " The conflict between the new view of 
life and the old institutions rages in the soul of every cultured 
person, and each and all long to flee from this inner tumult. It 
is now believed in many quarters, that there are two methods 
of regaining the lost soul's-peace and that one has a free choice 
between availing one's self of one or the other. Eesolute retro- 



1/6 The Icelandic Discoverers of America 

gression one is called, resolute advance the other. Either one 
gives the forms that have lost their substance this substance 
back again, or one tears them dowu completely and gets them 
out of the way." He elaborates this idea very skilfully, de- 
monstrating that there is really no middle course : one must 
either revive medisevalism, or sweep all mediaeval institutions 
from the earth. "These are the two methods," he concludes, 
" and the adherents of the first combat those of the other, and 
their desperate conflicts constitute the only contents of the 
political and mental life of the age." There is even more under 
this conflict than he indicates : it is the unceasing eff'ort of the 
Romish Church, even through the channels of Protestantism, to 
regain its lost dominion, to bring back the Middle Ages upon 
the earth. "Whatever the dissatisfaction of the victims during 
those deplorable ages, the Church had no complaint to make, 
and paganism, the Eeformafion, science, rationalism, republi- 
canism, are all forms of one and the same apostasy, which it 
is the business of the Church to stop, once and for ever. It 
is plain that this apostasy has reached its worst stage in America, 
and that in the United States, which, in the framing of their 
Constitution, have given such a mortal aflront to the Church, 
the battle must be fought out. It is not to be supposed for an 
instant that Americans will repudiate science, rationalism, and 
republicanism ; they are already more liberal than they know ; 
the only mistake has been that they have not yet realized the 
discrepancy between loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to 
the Christian religion, and that only a monarchist of Europe, 
devoted to all the old institutions, can be a true Christian. 
The hour is approaching that will reveal to Americans the un- 
tenable position they have attempted to hold, and the immediate 
occasion for discussion upon the subject is the question of the 
relative claims of Columbus and the Norse discoverers to 
American recognition. 

The decision of the people of this Republic will thus turn 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 177 

the scale, one way or the other. The recognition of Cohimbus' 
cLaims, and homage paid to him as the discoverer, signifies ap- 
proval of the Christian motives and policy since their incipiency ; 
it is to accept as genuine garbled and mutilated history, to 
exalt a pretender to the highest honour. The recognition of the 
claims of the I^orse discoverers is to show forcibly and conclu- 
sively that national integrity, at this present day, consists in 
paying the highest respect to historical truth, and in honouring 
those who have transmitted it to posterity, pure and complete ; 
it consists in attributing the greatest blessings enjoyed by 
civilized nations, liberty, general intelligence, personal rights, 
just and equitable laws, to the true sources of these. To follow 
the bidding of the Cliurch and celebrate Columbus' deed were 
to commit a ridiculous and irretrievable blunder, while to cele- 
brate the Norse achievement would retrieve at a single stroke all 
the blunders of the past and inaugurate a new era. 

However firmly the foundations of the Church are laid upon 
a future life, all its creeds and dogmas being based on salvation 
or the reverse, its doctrine and theory one of postponement, — 
the action of the Church has ever been materialistic, bent on im- 
mediate results of the most tangible and advantageous kind ; in 
other words, the benefits to be derived from the Christian 
religion were, to the votaries, relinquishment of actual advan- 
tages for long-deferred ones; to Church dignitaries and officials, 
the appropriation of present advantages without reference to 
the future heaven. The poor devotees and zealots needed 
heaven ; or were made to believe that they did ; the Church 
needed landed estates, money, temporal power, followers, sub- 
jugated nations, and to secure these has been its only object. 
Preaching heaven, it prized earth ! But for the idea of heaven, 
it could not have spoliated and plundered all the people of the 
earth. This has been the practical use of Bible, creed, and 
Christ ! If this has been the ecclesiastical policy all through 
the Middle Ages, it is equally the policy pursued still in Europe 

N 



lyS The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

and the United Htates, and will he until religiuus brigandage 
is su])pressed by the law of nations. 

As far as the Scandinavian North was concerned, the Eomish 
purpose is again indicated in the following paragraph from 
Fryxell's "Narratives from Swedish History:" "At this 
period Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Vikings swarmed 
throughout the whole of Southern Europe, and caused universal 
dismay by their plundering and marauding. It was therefore 
determined at several Church Councils to attempt the conver- 
sion of these heathen people to Christianity, and by softening 
their manners and feelings, put an end to their murder and 
bloodshed." Thus conversion, forced conversion of these people, 
was purely a prudential measure on the part of the Church ; 
the only way, moreover, in which the plundered property could 
be made to change hands. As for " softening their manners 
and feelings, and putting an end to their murder and blood- 
shed," we can take the two Christianized kings, Olof Trygg- 
vason and Olof the Saiiit, not to speak of the Swedish king, 
Olof Skotkonung, and their Christianizing processes, as shining 
examples of this ! Olof Tryggvason declared that " he would 
either bring it to this, that all Norway should be Christian, or 
die." It is said of him that "he was distinguished for cruelty 
when he was enraged, and tortured many of his enemies " — of 
course all pagans were his enemies ; — " some he burnt in fire ; 
some he had torn in pieces by mad dogs ; some he had muti- 
lated, or cast down from high precipices." Olof the Saint pro- 
pagated "the doctrine of mildness and peace," in the same 
way : "He also made the laws to be read there as elsewhere, 
by which the people are commanded to observe Christianity ; 
and he threatened every man with lo.ss of life, and limbs, and 
property, Avho would not subject himself to Christian law. He 
inflicted severe punishments on many men, great as well as 
small, and left no district until the people had consented to 
adopt the holy faith." 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Du^. 179 

Prescott remarks that " many a bloody page of history attests 
the fact, that fanaticism, armed with power, is the sorest evil 
which can befall a nation." If we substitute Christianity for 
fanaticism, the words will have precisely the same force, and, 
indeed, the proselyting work throughout has been much more 
characterized by cold-blooded calculation than by burning zeal. 
The same author also says : " Acts of intolerance are to be dis- 
cerned from the earliest period in which Christianity became 
the established religion of the Eoman Empire." Llorente, in 
tracing the origin of the Inquisition, leads directly to the fact 
that cruelty, torture, and murder were the earliest means used 
for the subduing of heretics or heathen : " This first step, which 
the popes and bishops had taken contrary to the doctrine of St. 
Paul, was the principle and origin of the Inquisition ; for when 
the custom of punishing a heretic by corporeal pain, although 
he was a good subject, was once established, it became necessary 
to vary the punishments, to augment their number, to render 
them more or less severe, according to the character of each 
sovereign, and to regulate the manner of prosecuting the culprit." 
A strange institution, this, for softening manners and feelings, 
and putting an end to murder and bloodshed ! It is estimated 
by Llorente that Ferdinand and Isabella, through their cruel 
measures, lost two millions of subjects. " If any sect," says 
Ludvig Borne, " should ever take it into their heads to worship 
the devil in his distinctive qualities, and devote themselves to 
the promotion of human misery in all its forms, the catechism 
of such a religion could be found ready-made in the code of 
several monastic colleges." Lecky affirms that in almost every 
country the abolition of torture was at last effected by a move- 
ment which the Church opposed, and by men whom she had 
cursed. 

Hence it appears that torture, extreme bodily suffering and 
death, were methods inseparable from the constitution of Chris- 
tianity ; its theory was— salvation obtained under extreme diflS- 
N 2 



iSo The IcEr.ANDic Discoverers of America; 

culty beyond; its practice- exemption from torture, bodily 
suffering or deatli, only secured by entire concession to the 
demands of the Church. These demands^ invariably, were for 
gain ; the Church gave spiritual nothings, the most vague and 
false of promises, in return for substantial property: it grew 
rich in exact proportion as its converts were impoverished ; pre- 
tending to have the monopoly of heaven, it actually gained the 
monopoly of earth and has kept it in every land called Chris- 
tian. A little further light will be thrown upon the theological 
method by these Avords of Lecky's ; '' Now, of all systems the 
world has ever seen, the philosophies of ancient Greece and 
Eome appealed most strongly to the sense of virtue, and Chris- 
tianity to the sense of sin." The Church was well aware at the 
start that unless men and women could be forced to confess 
themselves sinners, could be overcome with a sense of their own 
abasement, they would not tamely yield up the goods and pos- 
sessions that the Church coveted. He adds : " The ideal of the 
first was the majesty of self- relying humanity ; the ideal of the 
other was the absorption of the manhood into God." The ideal 
of the ancient Scandinavians was the same as that of the ancient 
Greeks and Romans : the majesty of self-relying humanity, and 
it was chiefly this that stood in the way of Christian purposes. 
Enough has been seen and known of the deeds of the Church ; 
it only remains to connect these deeds with their motive and to 
judge the Church accordingly. No enlightened nation has ever 
denied that the deeds were evil, but all have maintained strenu- 
ously that the motives for the deeds were pure and high, and 
that the Church, on the whole, has been justified in pursuing 
the course it has. Therein lies the fatal error. The action of 
the Romish Church and of the entire Christian Church, prior to 
the Reformation, is epitomized in the use it has made of the two 
discoveries of America, and its treatment of the discoverers. 
This apparent episode is the pivot upon which all history has 
turned, and the bulk of past events resolve into this single long, 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. i8i 

intense drama ! In the Columbus claim the whole motive of 
the Church stands revealed, its boundless cupidity and avarice ! 
Its crimes are all of the nature of those that the laws of civi- 
lized countries punish most severely, inasmuch as all infringe- 
ments of the rights of property are considered the grossest 
offences ; under the head of dishonesty, come robbery, spolia- 
tion, plunder, marauding, . and depredations of every kind; of 
all of these the Chnrch is guilty, for it uses violent means, uses 
threats, to obtain money. Every sending-out of missionaries to 
the heathen is a marauding expedition, all of the intimida- 
tions of the priests and clergymen are to the end of robbery, 
every threat of hell is ruffianism, to secure plunder These 
organized robbers, of whom the whole civilized world stand 
in awe, who enjoy complete immunity, could not gain a stiver 
from those they oppress, except through inspiring fear. 

It is this system of intimidation that the United States, to- 
gether with the nations of Europe, is tacitly sanctioning, but 
the Roman Catholic Church is not content with this. All these 
crimes have been perpetrated before by the Church and perpe- 
trated with impunity, but in insisting on the recognition of 
Columbus' claims, the Church demands from the United States, 
and from the world, public sanction of these crimes and permis- 
sion to continue them. It demands, furthermore, the ratiiica- 
tion of the Act of Pope Alexander VI., in deeding the continent, 
of which the American Eepublic now forms a part, to Spain, by 
means of a voluntary surrender of that coveted land, in the 
excess of its gratitude to the man and the power to whom it is 
said to owe all its greatness, — its voluntary surrender to the 
Holy See in Eome ! 

But there is a double movement to effect the end desired : 
simultaneously with the persuasions used in the Columbus 
matter, is the coercion of a set of men, under the control of the 
Catholic Church and in complete harmony with its purposes, 
known as the Home Rule party. The leaders of this party 



i82 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

employ threats that revive the recollection of the early days of 
Christianity, so violent and brutal are they. They have dis- 
tinctly proclaimed that there is no extreme that they vpill not 
resort to, to force England and the United States to accede to 
their demands. And what are these demands 1 The wholesale 
adoption of the Eoman Catholic faith 1 Not thus expressed ; 
the demands are for Home Eule in Ireland, and the so-called 
Liberal portion of an unthinking and heedless public do not dis- 
cern that inasmuch as Ireland is mainly Eoman Catholic, Home 
Eule for a large Eoman Catholic majority means no more nor 
less than Roman Catliolic rule in Ireland, the wielding of almost 
unrestricted political power by the most unscrupulous of Jesuitical 
demagogues ; it means the establishment of a Eoman Catholic 
seat and stronghold, west of England and north of France, that 
can harass both, drawing its chief sustenance from the great 
nation across the Atlantic, which hordes of Irish- American 
allies are using all their infernal arts to subvert to their foul 
purposes and which they confidently believe will yield to these 
arts and become the future empire of the Pope ; it means the 
elevation of Papal power to a high northern latitude, for the first 
time since the Eeformation ; it means converting the Irish race, 
hitherto the scum of the earth, into the scourge of the earth, to 
harass and torment all the other nations. 

These are the full dimensions of the plot, the double plot, 
connected by a subterranean passage of chicanery. If either 
succeeds, the Columbus attempt, or the Home Eule attempt, it 
is equivalent to having both succeed, for the Irish Catholic 
party will win the day. And success, as they confidently boast, 
depends only on the amount of coercion they use. As of old, 
they have no scruple about the means ; the slaughter of thou- 
sands of innocent persons, butchery, rapine, the firing or blowing- 
up of cities, savagery in every form, it is the old programme 
re-enacted, and goes to show how utterly impervious Eoman 
Catholics, the most devout and faithful of all Christians, are to 



OR, HONOIR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE. 1 83 



all civilizing and humanizing influences. After a life of several 
years in the United States, amid American institutions, they 
come out as perfect types of medicEvalism as if born and bred 
in Spain or Ihily, and are ready to lay their sacrilegious hands 
on the fairest and noblest productions of civilization. In their 
thought, England and the United States are already doomed. 
To such a height has the avarice of the Romish Church 
reached ! 

Like a prophecy of succour from the impending evil come 
these words : " From the depths of the North — from a remote 
and unknown island — a dawning light appeared, the harbinger 
of a bright day that was to enlighten the Scandinavian North 
for a century to come, and to extend its rays through other 
lands and down to later ages." From this North we know that 
reason has once reigned ; we know how the reign ceased, and 
we discern dimly how we can cause its renewal. 

It Avould now become a work of supererogation to specify the 
beneficial results of according to Iceland its full due, of emu- 
lating its freedom and enlightenment during the days when it 
was a flourishing republic, and before it became Christianized, — 
of attributing the discovery of America to the dauntless men 
who sailed from those Northern shores. The North failed and 
sank into a decline through accepting Christianity ; the treasured 
records of its experience are revealed to the two nations at 
present so grievously threatened by the rallying power of Rome, 
England and the American Republic, just in time to save them 
from its grasp. But for the history handed down to us from 
Iceland, we could not have known the extent of the evil tlie 
Church has wrought, for we would have had no uncontaminated 
race, morally sound and healthy, to compare with the diseased 
and enfeebled one the Church has produced. The actual life 
in Iceland, the intellectual stature of its people, reveal to UvS 
undreamed-of possibilities. In casting off the incubus of the 
Church we do not enter unguardedly into vague and proble- 



i84 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

matical conditions, but we resume conditions once found all- 
sufficient for human welfare, we will again lead the life of 
rational beings, and defamed reason will be our one sure guide. 
After the defeat of its present plans the Church of Rome will 
hardly be in a position to repeat its efforts for the ruin of man- 
kind. Thanks to Iceland, and the chronicles of the Scandi- 
navian North, the Church now suffers exposure as well as defeat, 
and its true nature will for the first time become known. 
Henceforth, however repulsive, it will cease to be a dangerous 
power. 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 185 



CHAPTEK X. 

THE CBr,EBRATION OF IT IK 1985! 

Iceland and the United States have several points in common 
and their fate is interwoven : they were first settled by men of 
the same race ; both have been republics, and it will stand re- 
corded in history that both have had a Millennial Celebration. 
" And an American," says Samuel Kneeland, " could not fail to 
admire the courage of these old Norsemen, and to feel pity for 
their subsequent loss of liberty ; and the more, as Iceland and 
New England are, as far as I know, the only two great republics 
founded on a love of civil and religious liberty, free from the 
sordid motives of love of gain and power." He asserts that 
Iceland was justified in proclaiming to the nations the celebra- 
tion of her one thousandth anniversary, and the parallel between 
the two will be maintained in this respect also, for the American 
Republic will not only be justified in proclaiming to the world 
the celebration of the one thousandth anniversary of its dis- 
covery by the Norsemen, but impelled by every high motive to 
pay this tribute to them and to Iceland ! 

In this celebration, one hundred years hence, Iceland will re- 
new its youth ; in this it Avill reap the reward of its long labours 
for the American Republic, urged to this public act by the force> 
of truth, by a deep sense of aU that it owes to the mother re- 
public, will then be Iceland's handiwork, the flowering-out of 
the ancient wisdom so richly stored there ! Ere Americans can 
have this celebration, they must take the step that will for the 



i86 Tup: Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

first time make tliem a free nation, they must abolish spiritual 
slavery as effectually as they Lave abolished the physical ; there 
must be another declaration of independence, this time against 
the Church of Rome and its tributary ; there must be another 
declaration of emancipation, — the temples and their sacraments 
regarded as so many slave-marts, where souls are bought and 
sold; the property of the slave-owners must be confiscated. 
And one hundred years after this has been done, one hundred 
years of development and progress, under the most favourable 
conditions a nation has ever enjoyed, with the sense of having 
achieved the grandest triumph in the world's history, the utter 
extinction of idolatry, — the United States will be prepared to 
have a celebration of unequalled grandeur ! 

To attempt to describe now, v/hile we are yet in spiritual 
bondage, while the United States yet bears the spiritual linea- 
ments of the Old Worlds and knows of liberty only in the rudi- 
mentary sense, what such a celebration could be would lead one 
to be accused of the most wildly Utopian views ; any description 
would partake of the fabulous ! Such a thing as a state of 
society based on the positive knowledge that will is might and 
that a rightly directed will is the omnipotent factor for good, is 
absolutely inconceivable for the people of this generation, in their 
iinpotency and flaccidity. ITow they will not exert themselves, 
because they believe exertion useless, and this has palsied them ; 
then they will not need to exert themselves, for their natural 
strength, of body and mind, will be so great that everything 
they do will seem easy to them. They will wonder in those 
happy days, not so far distant, how there could ever have been 
poverty in the United States, when the Church has been made 
to disgorge and the wealth locked up in ecclesiastical establish- 
ments has been evenly distributed ; how there could ever have 
been starvation, when the rich soil yields so bountifully ; how 
there could ever have been mental famine, a paucity of ideas, 
when the mind yields thoughts as abundantly as the soil yields 



OR, Honour to v.'iiom Honour is Due. 187 

fruits and grains, and one is no longer bullied with social prob- 
lems. Then human beings will realize that the earth was made 
to live in, that it is adapted to their highest needs, and that, 
whatever the next world may have to offer, satisfaction is not to 
be postponed until reaching it. If we have made the progress 
we have under a totally mistaken idea of existence, what will 
be our advancement when a happy and reliable theory takes the 
place of the present absurdly dismal one 1 What will be the 
sensations of those permanently released from the Church cell 1 
How will the world seem to them when there is no more regula- 
tion-diet, no more seventh-day rites, no more Bible prescriptions 
and monotonous reading from a gloomy book that has become 
the chief infliction of civilized life 1 How will the heavens look, 
when the Church canopy that has hidden the heavens from 
human gaze is removed 1 How will the earth look, when the 
Church curse is taken off of it 1 How will men and women 
appear, when they for the first time look each other in the face 
and see no brand there 1 Yes, the time will come when people 
will have no sorrow save the stinging recollection that they 
could ever have been such perverse, sickly fools in the past ! 

New-found health and joy, the recovered use of human powers, 
will in themselves be a celebration, but good inward conditions 
never fail of producing brilliant outward results and supply 
materials for that which wiU dazzle the eye and intoxicate the 
senses. It will be a duty, moreover, on that transcendent occa- 
sion, to show that a great nation, like the United States, does 
not depend upon the Church to produce splendid effects or to 
arrange a festival on a scale of princely magnificeiice ! 

Part of the celebration at Iceland was held at Thingvalla, on 
the Mount of Laws, the very spot where the ancient Things 
were held, " during the palmy days of the young and flourishing 
Iceland Republic, — during the four centuries of its independence 
and remarkable intellectual vigour." These Things were esta- 
blished there in 928 and in 1800 removed to Reikiavik. Our 



i88 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

celebration might take place along the whole Atlantic coast 
discovered and explored by the Northmen, from Labrador to 
Florida, and in the next one hundred years the free institutions 
of which the ancient Tilings were the germ, will render those 
shores glorious in the extreme I The progress of the last two 
hundred years has been retarded by Puritanism, witch-hunts, 
the persecution of the Quakers, and Quaker conservatism, slave- 
hunts, the war for independence and the war for emancipation, 
the clamour for rights and justice from slaves, women, the 
working-classes — and authors. Somehow with the emigrants to 
America, all the old evils had emigrated too, and sought free- 
dom to exercise themselves. They were tenacious, these evils, 
and hard to eradicate. Puritanism still remains ; if that could 
have been eradicated ,/^7's^, the whole train of evils would have 
been removed with it. As it was, Americans left that unmolested, 
and have had to grapple with each of the social problems in 
turn : the slavery question, the woman question, the temper- 
ance question, the labour question, the finance question, settling 
but one of them in these two centuries — the slavery question. 
Social economists and reformers are tugging away at each of 
the social evils, honestly deploring them, but really nourishing 
them through this allegiance to the Church. What is needed 
is manhood : too much manhood to oppress, too much manhood 
to endure oppression ; too much manhood to offer liquor, too 
much manhood to drink it ; too much manhood to treat women 
badly, or as inferiors, too much womanhood, which is the same 
in essence, to put up with ill-treatment or to accept an inferior 
position. The Church has destroyed self-respect ; hence these 
evils. They are the direct result of Christian preaching. 
Poverty is not caused by lack of money, but its appropriation 
in large quantities by those authorized by the Church to be 
rulers and masters, ecclesiastics of all grades, of which the Pope 
is head, sovereigns, state officials, capitalists, employers; the 
rest may fare as best they can. 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. .Sq 



In the Iceland Republic none of these reforms were needed, 
unless, perhaps, the vice of intemperance could have been abated. 
We have been told repeatedly by Christian writers that the in- 
troduction of Christianity in the North did away with slavery. 
If this is true, why did the northern states of the American 
Union have to wage a fierce war with the southern states for 
the suppression of an institution which the Churchy calling it 
divine, fully supported ; nay, which the Church, through its 
good servants, the Spanish monarchs and Columbus, had intro- 
duced and promoted 1 Mallet gives Christianity the credit of 
having " re-established a part of mankind, who groaned under a 
miserable slavery, in their natural rights," but there is no evi- 
dence of this in the sagas ; on the contrary, there is a vehement 
protest from many a fearless and outspoken pagan against the 
slavery that the priests and kings were attempting to put upon 
them, the bondage of the new faith, and Laing asserts that 
" in Norway this class (the slaves) appear to have been better 
treated than on the south side of the Baltic and to have had 
some rights. Lodin had to ask his slave Astrid to accept of him 
in marriage. . . . One owner, Erling Skialgsson, gave them land 
to sow, and gave them the benefit of their own crops ; and he 
pat upon them a certain value, so that they could redeem them- 
selves from slavery, which some could do the first or second 
year, and ' all who had any luck could do it in the third year.' " 
F:om this it appears that slavery already existed in the Christian 
countries on the south side of the Baltic, and consequently could 
not have offended the religious sense of the missionaries and 
priests when they travelled northward. Oswald expresses the 
plain truth by saying : " The Church that abolished slavery 
in name promoted it in fact ; for her doctrine implied a divine 
sanction of despotism, and an entire disregard for man's natural 
rights. The slave-barracks of ancient Rome were temples of 
liberty compared with the dungeons of the hierarchical torture- 
dens, where thousands of nature's noblemen vainly invoked 



jQo The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

death and madness as a refuge from the power of a more cruel 
foe." 

A continuation of the slave-system is the poverty-curse. The 
poor have no rights, and they are considered to he hound for 
life. A hireling is a slave to all intents and purposes ; lahour 
and the labourer are equally despised ; the favoured upper classes 
all over Europe and the United States hold the belief that the 
working-class are born solely to toil for them and to minister to 
their comfort ; this servitude is to be their permanent state, and 
they have no right to resist it or to aspire beyond it. Their Avages 
are the least amount that they can possibly subsist on ; educa- 
tion, leisure, enjoyment, opportunity, the use of their higher 
faculties, are denied them ; they are regarded as a species of 
domestic animal, whose muscles are of the only value to the 
community. Artisans and mechanics are a grade higher, but 
are likewise condemned to routine work, have closely stipulated 
exactions laid upon them, and are debarred from privileges. 

The sum-total of the wrongs and injustice suffered by women, 
including that monster evil prostitution, is to be traced directly 
to the Bible, to the gross impurity of all the ideas contained in 
that book regardmg marriage, the conjugal relation, procreation, 
woman's nature. Pretending to worship the Creator, to revere 
his revealed work, creation, the Bible pronounces the highest 
function delegated to the human species, procreation, vile, an 
act instigated by the lowest, most bestial carnal desire, and the 
human race are invariably spoken of as "conceived in sin." 
This is the reason why Jesus Christ was an ascetic and celibate, 
and why this unnatural way of life was alone deemed holy and 
exemplary. Marriage could only be hallowed by making it a 
sacrament, and was respectable and decent only because it was 
a bond for life. The Church recognizes in marriage nothing but 
a sexual relation ; it is the legalizing of passion ; hence it is 
opposed to divorce, which at once places man and woman on a 
higher footing with each other, inferring intellectual companion- 



OR, Honour to wpiom Honour is Due. 191 

ship, reciprocity of thought and feeling, and liberty of 
choice. It is conceded to be the duty of moral beings, 
in every other respect, to retract a wrong course and to 
repair any blunder they may have committed ; in the matter 
of marriage the Church forbids this. But in the Scandi- 
navian Iforth, before Bible or creed were accepted, or the 
Galilean god set up for worship, marriage was contracted 
without any religious ceremony and could be dissolved for any 
just and sufficient cause, 

Oswald observes : "We have been taught to treat the 
body as an enemy of the soul; and, if bodily health is an 
obstacle to true saintliness, we have evidently progressed in the 
path of salvation." But the Norsemen honoured the body, 
developed it to the highest possible perfection, and in the sagor 
and " Heimskringla " one frequently reads of some king or 
warrior, that he was extremely handsome, large and well-formed, 
while great praise is given to the beauty of the Northern women. 
Sickliness and weakness were despised among them, and no 
death was more ignominious for a man than that on a sick-bed. 
Their theories were the reverse of those held in these modern 
times in every respect. " Sublunary life," says Oswald, 
" according to a still prevalent theory, is a state of probation 
for testing a man's power of self-denial." Where the Christians 
relinquished, the Norsemen grasped ; and in their grand self- 
expansion, acknowledging no limits, no prohibitions, they fairly 
imbibed greatness from their surroundings, visible and in- 
visible, and absorbed the power of the elements into themselves ; 
essentially spiritual in their mentality they paid all deference 
to qualities, analyzed these, and arriving at accurate conclusions 
as to what was worthy of high-minded men, they accorded to 
themselves the true place in the scale of being and took their 
place, proudly and defiantly, as the lords of creation, in a literal 
sense. The modern, or Christian world, has been divided in 
opinion as to whether mankind were born to rule, or to be 



192 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

ruled, but this ancient race did not even debate the question, 
they knew instinctively that men were born to rule, and they 
did rule. 

It is necessary for Americans to come back to this know- 
ledge, and having acted upon it for a hundred years, they will 
be qualified to celebrate the anniversary in question in a spirit 
worthy of their Norse progenitors ! The evils that the American 
people are vainly striving to reform, disabled as they are by the 
palsying conviction that all human effort is well-nigh unavailing, 
are manifestly not derived from any Norse ethics. These, on 
the contrary, have been the source of infinite good, as demon- 
strated by scores of authors, and destined to be demonstrated 
with overwhelming force when all the philosophy and wisdom 
stored up in the historic records of the North shall have been 
published to the world ; but let us look on the reverse side of 
the picture and note, with Oswald, what the effect has been 
of the Christian doctrines. " Have they ever added one millet- 
seed to the sum of human happiness?" he asks. "Did the 
apostle of Nazareth ever speak one word in favour of industry, 
of rational education, the cause of health, the love and study 
of nature, of physical and intellectual culture 1 Not one. Has 
he promoted our progress in the paths of science and freedom ? 
Not one step." 

It will be difficult, therefore, to assign any good reason for 
further adherence to these doctrines. To tear down Christianity, 
under present conditions, is in no wise iconoclasm ; neither will 
it leave a moral vacuum ; the necessity is not even upon us of 
building up something else in its stead, for a structure has 
stood for ages, testified to by reliable history, which the Church 
and Christianity have obscured and hidden from the gaze ; we 
need engage in no useless or doubtful experimenting, for a 
republic, carried on under rationalistic principles, has once 
existed, and will serve as a model for the reconstruction of 
modern commonwealths. A republic is but half a republic, if 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 193 

with a free constitution, the inhabitants of the land submit to 
the Christian despotism, being subjects of the Church, and in 
reality are governed through fear, the fear of future punish- 
ment. Through the Church, monarchy, in its worst form, is 
maintained in the United States. Through the Church, 
medieevalism, with all its vices and corruption, is maintained ; 
and so long as this is the case, nothing approaching to a modern 
state of society can be obtained. 

Lest the enthusiasm roused by the anticipation of the 
grandest celebration on record, in 1985, be chilled by the 
thought that it is one hundred years off, and that the present 
generation, and even the next, will not live to see it, it should 
be borne in mind that such a celebration cannot be accom- 
plished in a day or a generation. If we would have it in any 
degree a worthy one, we must begin now. Seeds must be 
sown for such a harvest as that ! Iceland, in celebrating her 
millennial, had a thousand years' life to show, in which she had 
done more than any other commonwealth "for liberty, the 
advance of knowledge, and the preservation of historic records, 
at a time when the rest of Europe was in darkness," but the 
American Republic has done nothing as yet to earn the dis- 
tinction that fate has reserved for it in this millennial, which at 
once invests the young nation, lacking ancestral dignity, with 
an antiquity dating a thousand years back, and one that has 
heretofore been the mere spoils of an Italian adventurer and an 
avaricious ecclesiastical hierarchy — with the honour of having 
been discovered by worthy and independent men, led to its 
shores by no sordid motives. The glory of this fact wipes out 
the ignominy of the other. But as yet the people of the United 
States have not even acknowledged this fact ; several of the 
leading American historiiins deny it. The adherents of one 
historic party are pressing Columbus' claims ; the adherents of 
the other have not effectually set these aside. There has been 
no proclamation of the truth, and the public at large are so 

o 



194 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

utterly unaware of it that they still hold to the pious tradition 
that Columbus discovered America, in 1492. 

The first duty is obviously to confirm the fact of the Norse 
discovery ; the second, to make all the history so miraculously 
preserved in Iceland accessible, through translation and publi- 
cation, to the entire English-speaking public ; the third, is for 
this same public to endeavour to emulate the glorious example 
of their ancestors. It were not wise to predict that more than 
this can be done in a hundred years. But if less is done? 
the American Republic will not be prepared to celebrate the 
millennial anniversary of its discovery as it should be celebrated ! 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 195 



CHAPTER XL 

THE RIGHTEn POSITION OF THE SCANDINAVIAN NORTH AFTER THIS 
JUSTICE HAS BEEN ACCORDED TO IT. 

In the single statement that the discovery of America by the 
Norsemen has never been conceded by the world to be a fact^ 
is comprised the universal injustice thai has been done the 
Scandinavian North. By the Scandinavian JSTorth is meant 
definitely : Sweden, Norway, Denmark^ and Iceland ; thus 
four nations that have individually and collectively sustained 
the most brilliant national role that has ever been acted in 
Europe, or in the world, have been Avilfully consigned to 
obscurity, their history concealed or distorted. Should it be 
asked, How has this been possible, and why have they allowed 
it? the answer is, that their strength was sapped by the 
introduction of Christianity, planned and carried out solely for 
this purpose ; that the whole of Catholic Europe has been in 
combination against them, first as pagans, then as Protestants ; 
and that the assumption of Christian humility and weakness so 
completely destroyed their ancient pride that they were not 
capable of reasserting themselves and gaining their former rank. 
The world has rung with the exploits of great generals and 
conquerors, with the names of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, 
Napoleon, Wellington; but Hastings, Eolf, Ragnar Lodbrok's 
sons, Harold Harfager, William the Conqueror, Canute, are 
scarcely heard of ; nevertheless, England was twice conqxiered 
by Norse kings , and even the gi-eat King Alfred was compelled 
o 2 



196 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 



to divide the land with the followers of Odin. When other 
rulers have engaged in wars of conquest, this has redounded to 
their glory, and superior statesmanship, valour, ambition, general- 
ship, have been accorded to them ; when the Norsemen have 
engaged in wars of conquest, achieving unparalleled victories 
these results have been described as the ravages of lawless 
depredators, the incursions of the Northern sea-robbers of the 
piratical Danes, &c, &c. Military life, adjudged honourable 
and justifiable, to this day, by all civilized nations, was when 
pursued by them, alleged to be an evidence of their ferocity 
and barbarism. With bolder and more far-reaching plans for 
attaining the supremacy of Europe than even Russia.has ever in- 
dulged m, the Scandinavians were represented as men of limited 
intelligence only equal to pillaging expeditions against un- 
protected coasts. The Spaniards, too, have been quite willin- 
to forget this little episode which occurred in the ninth century '^ 
" From Gaul the Northmen crossed to Spain (a.d. 827) where 
they came in contact with the Arab conquerors, and penetrated 
as far as Seville, the fortifications of which they demolished 
The votaries of Odin prevailed over those of Mohammed • and" 
proceeding southward, they passed the outlet of the Medi- 
terranean, which from its resemblance to their own Baltic Strait 
they called the Nia^rva Sund, or the Narrow Sound." This is 
contained in " Scandinavia, Ancient and Modern," by Andrew 
Crichton and Henry Wheaton. They also penetrated to 
Jerusalem, literally scouring the earth, and concernin-. such 
cosmopolites such a statement as that in Cooley's " His'tory of 
Maritime and Inland Discovery," namely, that " the geographical 
knowledge possessed by the Northern nations was never circum- 
scribed within such narrow limits as those which confined the 
views of the early inhabitants of Greece and Italy,"- finds ready 
credence with those who have begun the study of this remark- 
able race. Among the cultured inhabitants of all modern 
nations are very many very expert travellers, who have produced 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 197 

a voluminous literature respecting the foreign countries they have 
visited, and yet these would be simply dazed and bewildered 
in reading of the way in which the Norsemen travelled, the 
distance traversed, — time and space both annihilated, — the ease 
with which they transported fleets, armies, from one part of the 
world to another. In the " Heimskringla " one may read, hit 
or miss, of almost any one of the N'orwegian kings, Harold 
Hi,rfager, Hakon, Olaf Tryggvason, or Olaf the Saint, and find 
that he goes over to Sweden to have a consultation with the 
Swedish king, looks into Denmark to see how things are getting 
on there, travels back and forth from Nidaros, the Throndhjem 
of the high North, to the Romsdal or southern Norway, or 
Ringerike, sails around the dreaded promontory Stad, the terror 
of all modern mariners, without the slightest difficulty, finds 
time to entertain Icelandic or English visitors, that is, Norse- 
men from England, to gather the freshest foreign intelligence, 
and with all this holds survey over the entire Norwegian 
coast. To one who has travelled over Norway in the nineteenth 
century, knowing full well the nature of the country and what 
has to be encountered there, such accounts are simply incredible ! 
It is a slight incident, to be sure, but suggestive, that the 
ascent of Hornclen, a high and apparently inaccessible mountain, 
barren of verdure, near Stad, on the west coast, was made by 
Olaf Tryggvason, who " fixed his shield upon the very peak." 
One of his followers had also attempted to climb this height, but 
after awhile could neither get up nor down, so that the king 
had to go to his rescue and carry him down in his arms. As I 
have myself twice sailed around Hornelen, I can appreciate all 
the merits of this exploit ! What is still more surprising, there 
seems to have been no scarcity of food or entertainment in 
Norway in those days ! 

There is therefore no exaggeration in the following state- 
ment, also by Wheaton : " In perusing the relation of their 
extraordinary achievements, we are impressed with the familiar 



198 The Icelandic Discoverers of America- 



recollection, that it is the history of a race not only sprung 
from the same lineage, but, in former times, our superiors 
in the arts both of war and peace." More than the conquest 
of nations, the Norsemen completed the conquest over 
themselves; their heroism has never been surpassed; it is 
related that Kagnar Lodbrok died singing, and Saxo records, as 
the greatest praise of a celebrated champion, that "he fell, 
laughed, and died." 

And yet it is the history of this race that has been suppressed ! 
Could the envy and malice of their Christian inferiors have 
been carried farther ? And what is the result ? The people of 
Europe and the United States are very nearly as ignorant of the 
Scandinavian North and its inhabitants, of its degree of culture, 
its customs, as if Sweden, Norway and Denmark were situated 
at the base of the Himalayas ! Indeed, the two first, especially, 
are supposed to be encompassed in Siberian darkness and snow! 
They are ostracized from other nations almost as roving tribes are 
debarred from intercourse with settled inhabitants ^there is a 
lingering echo. of " roving freebooters " in the refined mind, and to 
make the acquaintance of a cultivated Scandinavian is deemed a 
very piquant and unusual experience for a lady or gentleman of 
society. The language that was once '^he court language in 
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, and at Rouen,'' became 
confined to Iceland, and its two oflfshoots, the Danish and 
Swedish tongues were, together with the parent-tongue, soon 
forgotten in England, and in later centuries have seldom been 
learned by any foreigner." The early history of Europe is thus 
locked up in an unknown language, or to speak definitely, the 
history of Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Normandy, Great Britain, 
the Orkney and Shetland Isles, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and 
Denmark ! Catholic Germany and France, Italy, and Spain 
have been able consequently to suppress all knowledge of the 
ancient life and culture of the greater part of Europe ! It is 
permissible here to again cite Wilhelmi's statement that " in the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 199 

Heimskringla we obtain from the narratives of the Icelanders' 
extensive voyages through all Europe to Rome, Constantinoi^le 
and Jerusalem, also the knowledge of the history, geography 
and antiquity of eastern, western and southern Europe." 
Fortunately, the " Heimskringla " is translated and accessible 
to the entire English-reading public, but there are tomes upon 
tomes of history that are not translated ; the extent of this can 
be judged of somewhat from the fact that there is a catalogue 
in existence, containing the names of two hundred and thirty of 
the most distinguished scalds, from the ninth century until 
the reign of Waldemar II., and the scalds and sagamen, 
be it remembered, were the historians of the North. It is 
affirmed by Cooley that " the Scandinavians and the Arabians, 
are perhaps the only people among whom the reading or recital 
of histories ever became the ordinary amusement ; " this was 
the superb fruit of the Norsemen's cultivation of the art of 
peace. 

The first era of discovery was that inaugurated by the 
Norse voyagers, who found coast after coast ; the second was 
the quest for Icelandic manuscripts, in which discoveries, 
conquests, all manner of achievements were recorded ; it was 
the discovery of historical records; this, too, was Norse, or 
Scandinavian; the vague knowledge that there were such 
records in existence did not stimulate England or France to 
search for the annals of their own ancestors ; this was left to 
Denmark, with the active assistance of the Icelanders. Among 
the latter, Amgrim Jdnsson is mentioned as the man "who 
stands at the head of the restorers of learning in Iceland." It 
was he who discovered the prose Edda, in 1628. Another 
Icelander, Brynjulf Sveinsson, found fragments of both the 
prose and poetic Edda, and, in the year 1640, found the poetic 
Edda complete. This information is contained in the intro- 
duction to " The Eeligion of the Northmen," by Professor 
Kudolph Keyser. From the same source we learn that " the 



20O The Icelandic Discoverers of America 



government also took an active interest in these antiquarian 

tT^tt ''' ^"'"■'"' "^- ^"^ Tortus to iVd 

sale of """^""fy"! '" 1685 Christain V. forbade the 
ale of them to any foreigner." Sweden was also very active 
m these researches, and the names of many distinguished 
w IrTtrt f' """"■^ ''°™"- ^» -4uarianrrchivea 

Tr v» lt ?' ''''"'^' """^'''"8 "^ ""> -- »'tority, as 
early as 1669, and .n 1692 removed to Stockholm; their ol^ect 

mluscrlpts''^"™"" °' '"''''' »""™'"'^ ^"^ I--''- 
The knowledge contained in these Icelandic manuscripts is 
a md.spensabl, to the English and Americans as to the peopl, 
of the North, yet they do not have it and they scarcely know 
sL rh™ '"""^'"»"- -^"-'"gy and ancient 'history, 

Nyerup, Grundtvig, Montelius, Hildebrand, Thorlaciul, Fin,: 
Magnussen, even by name. Of modern Scandinavian history 
they know very nearly as little. The characters of Gustaf 
Adolf and Carl XII., to be sure, loom up out of the mist 
that enshrouds Scandinavia, and among artists and authors, 
ilrt T™'- °' ^'"d'Tl'orwaldsen, Hans Christian 
Andersen, Tegne^ are reg,arded as phenomena as rare as they 
a^e wonderful. The presence of such men m Paris as August 
Hagborg, Hugo Salmson, Normann, Smith-Hald, Heyerdahl, 
\\ah berg, ,s just beginning to be acknowledged in art ; Walte 
Euneberg rs becoming celebrated as a sculptor, but the works 
of his father, the greatest poet who ever wrote in the Swedish 
tongue, have wrth two ezceptions, a volume of his lyrics and 
Nadcschda," . never been translated into English. It is quite 
sufficrent o concede that Sweden has produced one poet. 
Tcgner; Kuneberg, Geijer. Nicander, Wallin. von Braun 
Belhnan. Malmstr6m, Bottiger. Snoilsky. can remain in oh. 

A.'b™™."' '' "'""" ""'""''"" '"" ''■ ^- '■»'"■'"■• *« «»°1 h Marie 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 201 

scurity. In the library of the Goteborg Museum, the works 
on Swedish history fill seventy-one pages of the catalogue, and 
doubtless a proportionate number of the shelves ; one can find 
there about everything, from the early writings of Ericus Olai^ 
and of Johannes Messenius, in Latin, to those of Mellin, Geijer, 
Fryxell, Starback, Afzelius, and the rest ; their name is legion ; 
but so long as Sweden's history is not admitted to be a con- 
stituent part of the world's history, it matters but little who its 
historians are. 

At the present practical juncture the lack of all this know- 
ledge is a very serious drawback to right action; it will be 
found that instead of sligliting insignificant countries, un- 
worthy the attention of cultured English and Americans, these 
have been debarring themselves from that which is most 
essential to their national development, really cutting them- 
selves off fiom their best intellectual supplies. They have 
sought historical knowledge from the wrong sources, and have 
thus been led away from the truth ; this has caused misunder- 
standing and estrangement between the very nations that ought 
to have been most closely united and to have felt the deepest 
pride in their common origin. But this alienation Avas just 
what the enemy, the southern Romish enemy, intended ; with 
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, England, Scotland, and 
the United States banded together in the closest fraternity and 
harmony, as they should be, and as they will be, once the hidden 
historical truth becomes Jcnown, Roman Catholic plots and 
intrigues will stand but a poor chance of success. 

There are great numbers of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish 
works that ought to be incorporated at once into English lite- 
rature ; among these none would be of more immediate use than 
the latest history of Sweden, ^' Sveriges Historia," in six 
volumes, written by a combination of the most able historians 
and antiquaries of Sweden, Drs. Montelius and Hildebrand, 
Professors Alin, Wei bull, and others; the style is a highly 



202 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

attractive and joopular one, and the work is lavishly illustrated, 
80 richly and intelligently, with scenes and places, historical 
buildings and relics, antiquities, portraits, the ancient aspects of 
cities^ &c., &c., that the careless and superficial could read the 
book pictorially, and even in this way gain a better knowledge 
of Sweden than any persons have possessed before. A para- 
graph from it will do good service just here, to show the "state 
of barbarism (?) among the ancient inhabitants of the North." 
"A visit to the National Museum, and a glance at the gold 
ornaments there preserved from the middle of the Iron Age, are 
sufficient to show what an astonishing wealth of gold must have 
existed here in Sweden 1300 or 1400 years ago. Gold bracelets 
of a couple of pounds weight are several times found, and not 
seldom, when one is working in the soil, a large number of gold 
ornaments are met with from this period, sometimes going up 
to a considerable weight and a value significant even in our 
circumstances." The same author, Dr. Oscar Montelius, goes on 
to say: '^ Commerce and Viking expeditions, during the period 
now in question, brought an almost incredible quantity of 
precious metals, mostly silver, to Sweden. How great the stock 
of silver at that time was in the land, is best realized by the 
considerable masses which are still, after the space of about one 
thousand years, annually dug up from the earth. Only during 
the last twelve years the National Museum has received more 
than 72 kilograms (170 pounds !) of silver found in Swedish 
soil from Viking times. It is remarkable that the silver now 
appears in such quantity ; this metal, it is true, had been known 
in our land since shortly after the birth of Christ, but for many 
centuries, clear to the beginning of the Viking period, silver 
seems to have been more rare here than gold." Describing the 
large commerce that was sustained, by way of Russia, Avith the 
East, he adds: "The certainty is, that Sweden, by way of 
Russia, obtained from Constantinople costly fabrics and other 
coveted commodities, which the refined Byzantines had to offer 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 203 

the pomp-loving Northerners in exchange for their valuable furs 
and other v^'ares." Horace Marryatt states that " in the inventory 
of Gripsholm, during the reign of King Gustaf, every object 
noted down is of foreign manufacture," Among the importa- 
tions during this reign are mentioned dye-stuffs^ fruits, garden* 
products, glass, gold, gems, horses, confectionery, linen wares, 
silk and velvet, silver, tapestries, — all giving evidence of refine- 
ment, love of luxury, and an extremely cultivated taste, and yet 
the statement that Sweden at the present day has two univer- 
sities, and upwards of 130 public high and normal schools of 
various grades, besides the special schools, and 9639 elementary 
schools; that it has over 4000 miles of railway; a commercial 
navy of 4411 vessels; a "Sevres" of its own, the porcelain 
factory at Korstrand, which has been the recipient of no less 
than ten medals, from Paris, Moscow, Berlin, Malimo, Boris, 
Stockholm, Bogota, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, and Vienna ; an 
opera-house, built by the art-loving Gustaf III., which in 1882 
celebrated its centennial, and in which all the operatic require- 
ments, singers, orchestra, ballet, scenic decorations (invariably 
fine), even to the translation of the text into Swedish, all the 
Italian librettos, are filled by native artists;— this statement will 
excite incredulous surprise in all who read it. 

The world has been so deeply impressed with the supposed 
fact of the wretched barbarism and ignorance of the ancient 
Scandinavians that it stubbornly refuses to believe that the 
modern Scandinavians have ever made any perceptible progress 
in letters or art. In England this scepticism is particularly- 
marked ; but either there or in the United States the assertion 
that the contrary is the case, is almost resented. Nevertheless, 
the Salon every year borrows much of its lustre from the 
works of Scandinavian artists, and such men as Normann, 
Cederstrom, Salmson, Hagborg, Smith-Hald, are in no danger 
of being eclipsed. In Johannes Jaeger's illustrated catalogue of 
the celebrated art-works of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, 



204 The Icelandic Discoverers of America; 

there are no less than 618 works, paintings and sculpture 
included, yet this by no means represents all. These three 
countries have given their full quota of geniuses to the world, 
and the general enlightenment would have been immeasurably 
increased had the fruits of their united labours been accepted. 
As it is, there has been little or no affiliation between the 
Scandinavian mind and the European or American mind ; the 
finest literary and art productions of the North have been 
scorned or ignored altogether ; an overwhelming amount of 
evidence has been requu'ed to convince the outside public that 
the North could produce anything of any value, and these 
nations, the oldest in civilization and culture, the intellectual 
parents and teachers of nearly every nation in Europe, have 
been regarded as tyros, as extremely young and unskilled 
aspirants for fame, whose mediocrity was only equalled by their 
presumption in daring to enter the lists at all. 

Several centuries of this treatment could not fail to have its 
effect upon those who suffered it ; it has greatly reduced the 
national sense of greatness in the Scandinavian lands and dimmed 
the ambition that once burned with so bright a flame. The 
Swedes of the present day have almost come to believe the 
world's contemptuous verdict of them ; in their wounded feeling 
their pride now is to be as exclusive as possible and not to seek 
intercourse with other nations at all ; they argue, and with a 
show of right, " if foreigners are so ignorant as not to estimate us 
properly, we will make no effort to undeceive them ; it is really 
of no consequence to us Avhat they think." Consequently, although 
Sweden has acquired a permanent bearing upon the universal 
mind, a permanent place in the ranks of those who have done 
most for the advancement of the human race, nay, in respect to 
securing the fundamental conditions for spiritual enlightenment, 
even having led, — it is suffered to sink into a decline, the records 
of its past greatness are buried, one cannot say forgotten, for 
they have never been known, the works of Swedish authors stand, 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 205 

comparatively unread, on the shelves of Swedish libraries, and the 
country languishes in its isolation, deprived of the prosperity that 
commerce, large financial relations and extensive intercourse with 
other lands would yield it. The hulk of the people in Norway 
are content if a crowd of tourists visit the country every summer 
simply to view its grand and beautiful scenery. In material 
development it is not nearly so far advanced as Sweden, is much 
more thinly populated, and the resources are less in every Avay. 
Norway passed into a decline at the expiration of the Viking 
period, and has nothing in its history to correspond with 
Sweden's "period of greatness." Still, in its literature and art 
Norway stands very high, and a few leading spirits among the 
Norwegians, both at home and abroad, manifest much patriotism 
and national pride, and in this instance the few will exalt the 
many. Denmark, however, has steadily held its own, and being 
greatly favoured by its proximity to the continent, has never 
been ignored so completely as Norway and Sweden. The Danes 
have shown more energy and strength of character than the 
Norwegians and the Swedes, and the steps they have long since 
taken to demonstrate historic truth in the great matter under 
consideration, make them the leaders in this new movement. 

But whatever remissness the nations of the North may be 
charged with, the cause of this remissness lies with the other 
countries, who have almost denied that they existed ; and the 
instigators of this widespread injustice are the Koman Catholics 
and the Church whence they emanated. The blame for the 
whole of this disastrous state of things, which must now, in all 
haste, be changed, to avert a dire calamity, rests upon the people 
of every land who have acted under Eoman Catholic influence 
and believed Eoman Cathohclies, against their better judgment. 
It is not for these, therefore, to consider the duty of the Nor- 
wegians, Danes, and Swedes in the present exigency, but to 
perform their own. Let them read and ponder well all that has 
been translated into their respective languages upon Scandinavian 



2o6 The Icelandic Discoverers of America ; 

history and mythology, and upon the Norse discovery ; let them 
demonstrate and proclaim what they will speedily ascertain to 
be facts ; let them, in a word, turn the tide of error and remove 
the false landmarks that lead all astray. 

One practical step that should be taken at once, is clearly in- 
dicated by Professor Howard Crosby in his introductory letter 
to Binding's " History of Scandinavia : " '^ We oddly mingle 
the old and the new, the dim and the bright, when we turn to 
Scandinavia, as we do with no other land. This double charac- 
ter naturally lends peculiar attraction to its history. Yet, with 
all this attraction, the history of no part of Europe is less familiar 
to the general mind ; probably because the Scandinavian coun- 
tries lie somewhat off from the world's great highways, and par- 
ticipate but moderately in the world's chief commerce. This 
should not be. The ignorance is a fault, especially among us of 
English descent, whose ancestral history is so intimately and 
variously associated with that of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. 
The Norsemen have left the memorials of Iheir habitation on 
the coast of Scotland, where Runic inscriptions tell the story of 
their prowess, while through much of England the familiar 
names of towns and hamlets are purely Norse. ... It is there- 
fore full time that our universities should have their chairs of 
Scandinavian literature, as a needful part of the apparatus for a 
thorough English education, to render more complete the exa- 
mination of the roots of our speech and race. While this want 
is felt, we may gladly hail any contribution to American litera- 
ture which tends to open this interesting field of research." 

Yes, that is precisely what is needed, chairs of Scandinavian 
literature in the American and English universities, skUful 
teachers of the Swedish and Danish languages, and a good corps 
of translators set to work at once to put the most valuable Scan- 
dinavian books into English. There should indeed be a society 
formed to fulfil an office parallel to that of the Royal Society of 
Northern Antiquaries, in Copenhagen ; this society renders the 



OR, Honour to whom Honour is Due. 207 

more important of the Icelandic manuscripts accessible to the 
Danish public, the other should render all valuable Scandinavian 
histories and records accessible to the entire English-speaking 
public. This highly necessary work has already been deferred 
much too long. With every hour that is delayed will the after 
compunction and humiliation be increased, the painful sense of 
having defrauded the Scandinavian North of its rightful position, 
of having been guilty of the basest ingratitude. In the near 
future it will be realized, too, how deeply we of English descent 
have defrauded ourselves in defrauding them, how seriously we 
have lowered our own rank in lowering theirs ! 

Still, after all remissness and shortcomings, the destiny of the 
united nations of the Scandinavian stock is a bright one. In a 
joint act we will both acknowledge our ancestors and be acknow- 
ledged as their true heirs and descendants ; to give wiU be to 
receive in a sense never realized before ; once hospitable to 
Northern thought, Northern history. Northern memories, 
Northern poetry, to the beauty that Northern genius has evoked 
from marble and canvas, to the noble legends and traditions 
that, having done so much to inspire genius in their native 
realm, will also lead the commercial and materialistic mind of 
the Continent and the United States to lofty ideals, — once 
hospitable to these, we will entertain many an angel un- 
awares ! 

What we are called upon to do, and what we will soon do with 
glad eagerness, is to attribute to our honoured Norse progenitors 
the grandest discovery that was ever made, the discovery of the 
American continent ; the conquest and remodelling of nearly 
the whole of Europe ; the founding of several great empires and 
republics ; the manly and determined resistance, for five hundred 
years, to the system of idolatry known as the Eoman Catholic 
or Christian religion ; the renewed opposition to this during the 
Reformation ; the permanent rescue of the three Scandinavian 
nations, including Iceland, and the American Republic, from the 



2o8 The Icelandic Discoverers of America. 

insatiate grasp of the Romish power ; the consequent liberty of 
thought and person. 

This done, the Scandinavian North will at once resume its 
true rank, and stand forth as the acknowledged intellectual and 
moral leader of the civilized world, as attested by every page of 
its history 1 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE IMPORTANT BOOKS CON- 
FIRMING THE ICELANDIC DISCOVERY OF 
AMERICA FROM THE YEARS 1076—1883. 



1076. Adam von Bremen, "Historia Bcclesiastica Ecclesiarum 

Hamburgensis et Bremensis." Published in Copenhagen 

in 1579. 
1570. Abraham Ortelius. " Theatrum Orbis Terrarutn." English 

translation published in London in 1606. 
1694. A Danish translation published of Snorre Sturleson's 

" Heimskringla." Copenhagen. 
1611. Abraham Mylius. " Treatise de Antiquitate Lingua) 

Belgicae." Leyden. 
1642. Hugo Grotius. " Dissertatio de Origine Gentium Ameri- 

canarum." Paris. 
1705. Thormodus Torfaeus. " Historia Yinlandiaa AntiquiB." 

Havnige. 
1755. Paul Henri Mallet. " Introduction a I'Histoire de Danne- 

marc." Copenhagen. Bishop Percy's English trans- 
lation published in London in 1770. Title : " Northern 

Antiquities." 
1767. David Cranz. "History of Greenland," London. 
1773. Benjamin Franklin. Letter to Mr. Mather, in " Memoirs of 

the Life of, &c." London. 
1777. Uno von Troil. " Letters on Iceland." Upsala. 
1786, John Keinhold Forster, " History of the Voyages and 

Discoveries made in the North," London. 
1808. John Pinkerton. " A general Collection of the best and 

most interesting Voyages and Travels in all parts of the 

World." London. 

1810. " Annales des Voyages." Paris. 

1811. Sir G.Steuart Mackenzie. " Travels in Iceland.' Edinburgh. 

1812. Hugh Williamson. "The History of North Carolina." 

Philadelphia. 

? 



210 Bibliography 



1817. Conrad Malte-Brun. " Histoire de la Geographie." Paris. 

1818. John Barrow. "A Chronological History of Voyages into 

the Arctic Regions." London. 
1818. J. H. Shroeder. " Svea. Tidskrift for Vetenskap och Konst." 



1818. Ebon. Henderson. " Iceland ; or, the Journal of a Resi- 
dence in that Island during the year 1814-15." Edin- 
burgh. 

1824. John V. N. Yates. "History of the State of New York." 

New York. 

1825. Erik Gustaf Geijer. " Svea rikes hafder." Upsala. 

1828. Washington Irving. " A History of the Life and Voyages 
of Christopher Columbus." London and New York. 

1830. Henry Wheaton and Andrew Crichton. " Scandinavia, 
Ancient and Modem.'" Edinburgh. 

1830. W. Cooley. " The History of Maritime and Inland Dis- 

covery." London. 

1831. Henry Wheaton. " History of the Northmen, or Danes and 

Normans, from the earliest times to the Conqnest of 
England by William of Normandy." London. 
1831. W. Joseph Snelling. " The Polar Regions of the Western 
Continent Explored." Boston. 

1833. Finn Magnusen. " Nordisk Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighet." 

Vol. IT. Copenhagen. 

1834. Josiah Priest. " American Antiquities and Discoveries in 

the West." Albany. 
1834. T. Campanius. " Descrii^tion of the Province of New 

Sweden." Philadelphia. 
1836. Constantin Samuel Rafinesque. " The American Nations ; 

or. Outlines of their General History, Ancient and Modern." 

Philadelphia. 

1836. "Report addressed by the Royal Society of Northern 

Antiquai'ies to its British and American members." 
Copenhagen. 

1837. Charles Christian Rafn. " Antiquitates Americanas." 

Copenhagen. 

1837. Wilhelm August Graah, " Narrative of an Expedition to 

the East Coast of Greenland ... in search of the lost 
Colonies." London and Copenhagen. 

1838. W. H. Prescott, " History of the reign of Ferdinand and 

Isabella." London and New York. 
1838. Foreign Quarterly Review. London. 
1838. Edward Everett. North American Review. Boston. 
1838. Tlie Democratic Review. Washington. 
1838. The New York Review. New York. 

1838. " The Royal Geographical Society." London. 

1839. J. Toulmin Smith. "The Discovery of America by the 

Northmen." London. 



Bibliography. 



18ti9. Grenville Pigott. " Scandinavian Mythology." London. 

1841. N. L. Beamish. " The Discovery of America by the North- 

men." London. 

1842. K. Wilhelmi, " Island, Hvitramannaland, Gronland nad 

Viuland, oder, der Normanner Leben auf Island und 
Gronland und deren Fahrten nach America schon iiber 
600 Jahre vor Columbus." 

1843. Th. H. Erslev/. " Almindeligt Forfatter-Lexicon for 

Kongeriget Danmark." Vol. II., pp. 697 — 603. 

1844. Samuel Laing. " Translation of the Heimskringla, with a 

preliminary Dissertation." London. 
1844. Carl Heinrich Hermes. " Die Entdeckung von America 

durch die Islander im zehnten und elften Jahrhunderte." 

Braunschweig. 
1847. Alexander von Humboldt. " Cosmos." London. 
1847. Gustaf Klemm. "Algemeine Cultur-Geschiclite der 

Menschheit." Leipsig. 
1850. " Ancient Scandinavia." In Chambers' Papers for the 

People. Vol. VI. Edinburgh. 
1860. John T. Shillinglaw. " A Narrative of Arctic Discovery from 

the earliest period to the present time." London. 
1852. JensJacobAsmnssenWorsaae. "AnaccountoftheDanesand 

Norwegians in England, Scotland and Ireland." London. 
1852. William and Mary Howitt. " The Literature and Romance 

of Northern Europe." London. 
1852-54. A. E. Holmberg. " Nordbon under Hednatiden." Stock- 
holm. 
1854. Jacob Eudolph Keyser. " The Religion of the Northmen." 

London. 
1854. Pliny Miles. " No rdurfari ; or, Rambles in Iceland ." New 

York. 

1856. S. F. Haven. Smithsonian Institute. Washington. 

1857. Charles Wyllys Elliott. "The New England History." 

New York. 

1867. Oscar Ferdinand Pescbel. " Geschichte des Zeitalters der 
Entdeckungen." Stuttgart. 

1860. Georg Michael Asher. " Henry Hudson, the Navigator.'' 
London. 

1860. Em. Domenech (L'abbe). " Seven Years' Residence in the 
Great Deserts of North America." London. 

1860, Sir Charles Forbes. "Iceland; its Volcanoes, Geysers and 
Glaciers." London. 

1862. Adamus Bremensis. " Menigheten i Norden, &c." Copen- 
hagen. 

1862. Andrew James Symington. " Pen and Pencil Sketcbes of 

Faroe and Iceland." London. 

1863. Sabine Baring-Gould. "Iceland; its Scenes and Sagas.'' 

London. 

p 2 



212 Bibliography. 



1863. Desire Charney and Viollet-Le-Duc. " Ruines Americaines." 

Paris. 

1864. L. S. Borring. " Notices on the Life and Writings of Carl 

Christian Rafn." Copenhagen. 

1865. Daniel Wilson. " Pre-Historic Man : Researches into the 

Origin of Civilization in the Old and the New World." 
London and Edinburgh. 

1866. Paul 0. Binding, " History of Scandinavia, from the early 

times of the Northmen, the Sea-Kings and Vikings, to 
the present day." London. 

1867. Hans Hildebrand. "Lifvet pS, Island i Sagotiden." Stock- 

holm. 

1868. Jacob Rudolph Keyser. "The Private Life of the Old 

Northmen." London. 
1868. Carl Wilhelm von PaijkuU. "A Summer in Iceland." 

London. 
1868. B. F. De Costa. "The pre-Columbian Discovery of America 

by the Northmen." Albany. 
1870. B. F. De Costa. " The Northmen in Maine." Albany. 
1872. Cristoforo Colombo. " Select Letters." Translated and 

edited by R. H. Major. London. 

1872. Coi'nhill Magazine. London. 

1873. National Quarterly Bevieiv. New York. 

1873. R. H. Major. " Voyages of the Zeni." London. 

1874. Gabriel Gravier. " Decouverte de I'Amerique par les 

Normands au X° Siecle." Rouen and Paris. 
1874. Aaron Goodrich. " A History of the Character and Achieve- 
ments of the so-called Christopher Columbus." New 
York. 

1874, Rasmus B. Anderson. " America not Discovered by Co- 

lumbus." Chicago. 

1875. Thomas Carlyle, " The Early Kings of Norway," London. 
1875. Bayard Taylor. " Egypt and Iceland in the year 1874.'' 

London and New York. 
1875. Hubert Howe Bancroft. " The Native Races of the Pacific 

States of North America." New York. 
1875. Phineas Camp Headley. " The Island of Fire (Iceland) ; or, 

A Thousand Years of the Old Northmen's Home. 874- 

1874." Boston. 
1875. J. T. Short. " The Galaxy." New York. 

1875. Gilderoy Wells Griffen, " My Danish Days." Philadel- 

phia, 

1876. Marie A. Brown. " The Galaxy." New York. 

1876-81. William Cullen Bryant and Sidney Howard Gay. "A 
Popular History of the United States, from the First 
Discovery of the Western Hemisphere." New York, 

1876, Samuel Kneeland. " An American in Iceland." Boston. 



Bibliography. 213 



1877. Alexander Farnum. " Visits of the Northmen to Rhode 

Island." Providence. 
1877. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. "A Book of American 

Explorers." Boston, 
1877. N. L. Beamish. " Voyages of the Northmen to America." 

Edited by E. P. Slafter. Boston. 
1880. J. T. Short. " The North Americans of Antiquity." New 

York. 
1880. Eev. F. Metcalfe. "The Englishman and the Scandinavian." 

London. 

1880. G. H. Preble. "History of the Flag of the U.S.A., and the 

Flags of Ancient and Modern Nations." Boston. 

1881. Frank Vincent, Jr. " Norsk, Lapp and Finns, &c." London 

and New York. 

1881. P. B. Du Chaillu. "The Land of the Midnight Sun." 

London and New York. 

1882. S. S. Cox. " Arctic Sunbeams." New York. 

1883. Jules Leclercq. " La Terre de Glace." Paris. 



